Kind of Blue (41 page)

“You want me to drive?” Ortiz asked.

I slipped the key into the ignition and started the car.

“You okay?”

I gripped the wheel tightly, drove off, and didn’t answer.

“For what it’s worth, that bitch in juvenile got canned a few months ago. She got caught snooping into some department databases.”

Pulling off Crenshaw, I headed up to The Jungle, a run-down South L.A. neighborhood crammed with seedy two-unit apartment buildings. Residents originally gave the neighborhood its nickname because of the lush tropical landscaping—fan palms, banana plants, begonias, enormous birds of paradise—that surrounded the buildings. But soon the name took on a more menacing meaning when the neighborhood began to deteriorate. Rival gangs shot it out on the streets, dealers peddled crack in the alleys, and the shoddily built apartments fell into disrepair.

I pulled up in front of the apartment where Li’l Eight was staying, we climbed the steps to the second floor, and rang the bell. When no one answered, Ortiz and I peered into a few side windows and determined nobody was home.

I returned to my car, and parked down the street, far enough away so Li’l Eight couldn’t spot us, but close enough so I could keep an eye on the front door. After two hours of silence, Ortiz said, “You’re great fucking company.”

“Sorry. This Duffy thing’s got me turned around.”

“Why don’t we call in this address to SIS and let them sit on the apartment. They can bring Li’l Eight in for us.”

“I don’t want to interview Li’l Eight at the station. I want to talk to him right here. I’ve got a creative interviewing approach in mind for him.”

“Just don’t be so creative that they fire your ass.”

I turned toward Ortiz. “This was never just a homicide investigation. The stakes were always high for me. Now they’re higher. I’ve got to take care of it in my own way.”

Ortiz nodded. “I understand.”

After two more hours of waiting, I said, “Let’s meet downtown tomorrow morning at five and then hit him up. We should catch him in bed then.”

“You got it.”

I drove back to PAB, and we headed up to the squad room. Now was the time to confront Duffy.

Duffy was in his office, hunched over a computer, typing furiously. I entered without knocking and sat down.

He pushed away from his desk, twirled his chair toward me and, with a theatrical motion, checked his watch. “It’s almost two. Where the hell you been?”

“I just figured out something.”

“What’s that.”

“That you suspended me last year because you were trying to get me to quit.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. You didn’t contact me this past year because you didn’t
want
me to come back.”

“Ash,” he said, his voice softening, “when you were just a kid on patrol, I pulled you off the street and brought you into homicide as a trainee. I shepherded you through and made sure you made detective. I was there when you got your shield. I brought you to Felony Special. We go too far back for you to come up with some crazy-ass conspiracy theory about me.”

Thinking back to all those years with Duffy, how I had trusted him, looked up to him, worked so hard for him to curry his approval, I felt betrayed and began to choke up. I couldn’t get any words out, so I just swallowed hard and shook my head.

“You’re paranoid,” he said.

I leaned forward and studied his face. “I know you were banging that secretary in juvenile. I know you told her that Latisha Patton was cooperating with me. I know she put the word out on the street that Latisha was a snitch. And I know, now, that’s why Latisha was shot.”

Duffy gripped his desk, kneading the edges. “That cunt’s a liar.”

“I didn’t hear it from her. I did my own investigation.”

Duffy’s hands fell limply to his sides.

“After I was suspended last year, you didn’t want me to come back because you were afraid I might stumble onto the truth. You figured you were home free when I quit. Then you heard that I started nosing around the case, that Latisha’s daughter complained, that the I.A. lieutenant warned me off. You thought I’d keep picking at the case. So you decided the best way to derail me was to hire me back on the job, where you could keep an eye on me and load me up with cases so I’d be too busy to chase the Patton case. You were trying to figure out how to get me back when the Relovich homicide landed on your desk. You used the case to manipulate Grazzo into asking for me, making him think it was his idea.”

He stared straight ahead, frozen, not even blinking

“Don’t bother trying to weasel out of all this. I know it’s true. You know it’s true.”

He leaned over and closed the blinds in his office. Raising both palms he said, “This is the God’s honest—” He stopped in mid-sentence and abruptly dropped his palms to his lap.

“Let’s stop shoveling the shit,” I said.

His face was contorted, as if he was struggling with an emotion that was somewhere between anger and anguish.

“God, I’m a stupid motherfucker. Worst mistake of my life. Damn, Ash. You know how often I wished I’d never got involved with that whore? Every fucking day for the past year.”

“You don’t know what I’ve gone through,” I said softly.

Duffy bowed his head. “That’s what’s made it so hard,” he said, his voice cracking.

“You can fuck anyone you want. But why did you have to tell her about Latisha? I just don’t understand that.”

He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and emitted a phlegmy cough. “We were out drinking one night. Christ, I’d downed so many I can’t even remember where we were or when. I don’t even remember talking to her about the case. It was a total fucking blackout.”

“You’re pathetic.”

“That’s not an excuse, I know. But that’s the truth. The next morning she brought up Patton’s name. I realized then that I’d totally fucking blown it. I tried to piss backward. But it was too late.”

“But why?”

He shook his head, frowning. “I guess I was telling her about some of the cases we were working, trying to impress her, an old man with a hard on for a young babe. She hung on my every word, and I kept gabbing.” He slammed a palm on the blotter, the tears spraying the edges of the desk. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

Watching Duffy sputter out an explanation, I felt an intense hatred for him. I wanted to grab him by the throat and smash that self-pitying look off his face. “What a prick you are. You just let me take the fucking fall. You took the easy way out. And, to be perfectly safe, you sent the case back down to South Bureau. You figured those guys are so overwhelmed, so overworked, they’d never have time to get to the truth. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with me or the case. You were just praying I’d never put it all together.”

Duffy unclipped his badge from his belt and dropped it on his desk. “You want my badge, Ash, you can have it. I mean it. You can tell Grazzo right now about all this. I won’t dispute it. I got twenty-three years in. I don’t deserve a twenty-fourth.”

Reaching over, I picked up the badge and walked to the door. I knew Duffy. He always liked to make the grand gesture. At the time he made a dramatic pronouncement, he usually believed it. Later, however, he invariably recanted.

I tossed the badge on the floor and walked out of the squad room.

As I walked through the dim parking lot, I could feel my anger settling and mutating into a profound sadness. I didn’t have the luxury to wallow in how Duffy fucked me over, however, because I had to focus on Li’l Eight. I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow morning to sit on his apartment. And I decided that I wasn’t going to call Ortiz. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do when I confronted Li’l Eight, but I knew I wasn’t going to adhere to LAPD interrogation regulations. This case was personal for me, but it wasn’t personal for Ortiz. I was willing to get fired over how I sweated Li’l Eight; I wasn’t willing to risk Ortiz’s job.

I drove out to The Jungle, parked down the street, and opened my trunk. From a metal toolbox, I removed a small silencer that I had confiscated from a Belizian cocaine dealer and slipped it into my coat pocket. Light-stepping it to the building, I climbed up the stairs to Li’l Eight’s apartment on the second floor, looked in the windows, and determined no one was home. So I returned to my car, kept my eye on the front door, and waited.

I was jittery, nervously tapping my fingernails on the dash, but the longer I waited, the more I thought about Li’l Eight, the angrier I became. When I had first joined the LAPD, there seemed to be a code that criminals followed. If you held up a market and the clerk gave you the cash—you didn’t shoot him simply as an afterthought. If you knew a witness was going to cooperate with detectives, you threatened him first and persuaded him not to cooperate—you didn’t just blast him. If a detective came to arrest you, you’d probably run and maybe even shoot it out—you’d never tie him up and debase and assassinate him. I may not have liked some of the old-time crooks I had arrested as a young patrolman, but I realized now that many of them at least pulled their heists with a degree of professionalism, getting in and out of jobs quickly,
with no violence. Li’l Eight symbolized to me the new breed of criminal. Since he’d decided to violate the code of street poker, I decided I wouldn’t simply call him. I would raise the stakes.

At dusk, I drove off to a gas station to take a piss. When I returned, the fog had rolled in, so there wasn’t much of a sunset, just a gradual darkening as light seeped from the veil of gray on the western horizon. At eight, I thought I saw someone enter the apartment. I climbed out of my car, but slowly crawled back in when I realized it was the apartment next door. A half hour later, I almost dozed off, so I opened all the windows and took a few deep breaths. The fog had misted up my windshield, limiting my visibility, so I kept my windshield wipers running.

Shortly after nine, I spotted a stocky black kid with a goatee, who was wearing a baggy, white T-shirt, approach the apartment. Jumping out of the car, I hustled down the sidewalk for a better look. It was Li’l Eight. As he began to climb the steps, clutching a key ring in his right hand, I slipped up behind him, stuck the Beretta in his back and said, “Put the key in the lock nice and easy.”

When he reached into his coat pocket, I jammed the gun in his back and said, “Hands out where I can see them.”

He opened the front door and I followed him inside.

“Surprised to see me?”

He gave me a contemptuous look.

“Sit down.”

He held his wrists out toward me. “You might as well cuff me right now and take me downtown. ‘Cause I ain’t sayin’ shit till I see my lawyer.”

I took a step forward and lifted up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. And there it was on his upper arm: The big CK tattoo with the
C
crossed out.

I was so enraged, Li’l Eight faded into an amorphous blur. I wanted to jam the Beretta into his mouth and blow the back of his head off.

He stood up, looked at me with a half smile, and muttered so softly I could barely hear, “Shoulda finished you off when I had the chance, punk-ass bitch.”

I slammed him on the side of his head with the barrel of my gun. He fell to his knees, wiped the blood off, and looked up at me with a smirk
of superiority. “No beat down gonna make me change my mind. Nothin’ you can do to make me talk.”

I gripped my gun tightly and said, “You’re going to tell me all about how you killed that Korean liquor store owner and you’re going to tell me all about Latisha Patton.”

I thought of my old guru, Bud Carducci, and how he used to persuade recalcitrant suspects to talk. He’d figure out what they were most afraid of, then exploit that fear.

“Start talking—Li’l Seven.”

He shook his head. “That ain’t my name.”

“I screwed the silencer onto the Beretta’s barrel, reached over and grabbed Li’l Eight’s right wrist. I jammed the muzzle on the tip of his pinkie fingernail and pulled the trigger, spraying tissue and nail fragments over the front of his shirt.

He let out a strangled scream and flopped on the carpet like a landed fish, jerking his hand spasmodically.

“It will be if I have to pull the trigger again.”

“Mother
fucker
!” he howled.

I grabbed a towel from the kitchen and tossed it to him.

He wrapped his finger and fell onto the chair, writhing and yelping.

“You going to tell me?” I asked.

He looked up at me—blinking hard, lips quivering—and said, “Don’t know about no Korean and no lady named Tisha.”

“I just took the tip off. But next time, I’ll blow the whole pinkie off. Then I’m going for the ring finger and the index finger and the thumb. So you either tell me what I want to know, or I’ll keep blasting.”

He shook his head.

I wrestled his right hand out of the towel, stuck the muzzle just below his pinkie, and said, “You want to be known as Li’l Seven?”

“No!” he screamed. Reaching for the towel, he wrapped his right hand. “You crazy!”

“That’s right,” I said. “So you better start talking.”

“Just keep that piece away from my hand,” he shouted.

I pointed to the chair. “Get off the floor and sit down.”

He crawled to his feet and teetered onto the chair, his chest heaving with staccato coughs.

“You robbed that Korean market on south Figueroa, right?”

He nodded.

“Yes or no?”

“Yeah, I robbed it.”

“Why’d you shoot the Korean guy behind the counter?”

He looked down at the towel, now soaked in blood, and shook his head.

I jabbed my gun toward the towel.

“I don’t like slopes.”

“That’s it? That’s why you shot him?”

“Didn’t want to leave no wits.”

“But you were wearing a mask. He couldn’t identify you.”

He mumbled a reply, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

“What was that?” I shouted.

“I’d been in there before, buying shit and casing the place,” he said through gritted teeth. “Maybe he could’ve recognized my voice or IDed me later on. I didn’t want to take no chance.”