Kind of Blue (6 page)

I cruised down to the Harbor Division station, a bland, blocky, orange brick structure hard by the freeway, facing the railroad tracks, where a freight train rumbled by. I walked through the station to the scuffed prefab trailer in the parking lot that housed the homicide unit: a makeshift squad room with frayed blue-gray carpeting. Eight battered metal desks were bordered by metal filing cabinets topped with brown cardboard boxes overflowing with case files. Fluorescent lights cast a pale green tint over Detectives Hank Savich and Victor Montez, who were waiting for me at their desks. Neither stood up when I introduced myself; neither extended a hand.

I sat down on the edge of a desk and said, “I really appreciate you coming in on Saturday morning to help—”

“First of all, I don’t like getting bigfooted,” said Savich, who had a pale, narrow face pockmarked with acne scars. “I don’t like outsiders taking my cases.”

I was well aware that divisional detectives often resented it when Felony Special—or one of the other specialized units from the Robbery-Homicide Division—took over an investigation. Some were able to put their resentment aside, act professionally, and provide the
downtown detectives with a proper briefing. Others, like Savich and Montez, apparently could not overcome their wounded pride. I understood how they felt. Still, I wasn’t in the mood to take any shit from them.

“I didn’t
take
this case. It was assigned to me by my lieutenant.”

“I thought you’d quit, Detective Le-
veen
,” Savich said, intentionally mispronouncing my name.

“It’s Le-
vine
.”

“Whatever,” Savich said.

“I did quit. But now I’m back.”

Montez, pear-shaped and cocky, stood up beside his desk and looked down at me. “Witnesses like Latisha Patton might not get protected at Felony Special, but here in the Harbor, we make sure
our
wits don’t get capped.” He smiled malevolently. “So if we tell you what we’ve got, you’ve got to promise to be real careful, Detective Le-
veen
.”

I clenched my teeth, trying to control my anger. But almost against my will, I found myself jumping to my feet and, with a quick backhand, I swept everything off Montez’s desk, a half-filled coffee cup and pens, pencils, and paper clips scattering on the floor, the cup shattering on a desk leg and the coffee pooling on the carpeting. I kicked a coffee cup shard across the squad room and shouted, “I came here to be briefed! Not to listen to your sarcastic fucking comments!”

I took a few steps until I was just inches from Montez, forcing him to take a step back. “Hand over the murder book, and I’m outta here.”

Montez glanced nervously at me and whispered to Savich, “He’s a fucking psycho.”

I knew they couldn’t afford to let me grab the murder book and walk. If they refused to help me—a Felony Special detective on a case that the chief was personally interested in—they might be consigned next week to the purse snatching detail.

Savich flashed a forced smile at me. “We’re just messin’ with you. No offense meant. Let me tell you what I know.”

Feeling drained, I eased into a chair next to Savich’s desk.
I’ve got to get a grip
, I thought. I can’t be going off on people like that.

Savich opened a desk drawer and pulled out the murder book—a royal blue, plastic, three-ring binder—briefly leafed through it, and set it on the corner of his desk. He then updated me, describing the crime scene, how the body was found, and what trace evidence technicians
from the department’s Scientific Investigation Division had gleaned from the house.

“Get anything from the canvas?” I asked.

“Nobody saw anything,” Savich said. “Nobody heard anything.”

“Any ideas why no one heard the shot?”

“Lots of ways to minimize the sound of a gunshot,” Savich said. “Not many of these clowns on the street can get ahold of a silencer. But you can make one out of a plastic soda bottle. Course, you know all that.”

He reached across his desk and handed me the murder book. I opened it and studied the photographs of Relovich’s body, the Preliminary Investigation Report, the crime scene diagram, the property report, statements from neighbors and patrol officers, and the chronology of the investigation, which ended at: “0900: Meeting with Felony Special Detective Ash Levine, who assumed responsibility for the case.”

“Talked to any family members?” I asked.

“The ex-wife,” Savich said. “But she didn’t give us much.”

“Anyone he was close to?”

“We heard the uncle. He’s a fisherman. He was out for halibut when we called. His phone number’s in the murder book.”

“Any thoughts on why Relovich pulled the pin after thirteen?”

Montez motioned as if he were tipping a bottle toward his mouth.

“That why he was living like a rookie cop?”

Montez nodded.

“What do you guys think happened up there?”

“Junkie hot prowl,” Savich said. “A shot, a grab, and a run for it.”

“I agree,” Montez said. “I used to work CRASH down here and I used to follow the homies from the projects up to the houses on the hills where they’d fill their trunks with big screens, iPods, and laptops.”

“How about you?” Savich asked solicitously. “What’s your take?”

“I don’t have a handle on it yet.” I picked up the murder book and walked off, calling out over my shoulder a halfhearted, “Thanks.” I crossed the room to the vice section, which was empty, with all the desks vacant. Glowing under a flood of florescent light, it had the forlorn air of a windswept football stadium an hour after the game ended. The room would not begin filling up, I knew, until dark.

I was reaching for a phone, when Randy Walker, a rangy sergeant with a crew cut and jug ears, who headed the division’s buy team, hustled
toward me. “Accident on the freeway. I was stuck in traffic. Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“I just got here.”

“Good. What’ve you got for me?”

I told him that I believed the killer had parked on the flats, climbed the hill, shot Relovich, returned to his car, and sped off. Fortunately, Walker was friendlier than Savich and Montez and too polite to bring up the Patton case.

“We spotted some brisk business on two street corners,” I said.

“That’s becoming a hot spot for the Rancho Thirteen Boyz—the gang from the projects that controls the tar trade,” Walker said. “We don’t have enough people to shut these mutts down. You know how it is. It’s like pushing down on a balloon. We stop ’em in one area and they just pop up in another.”

“How about blitzing the area during the next few nights,” I said. “Can you get your undercover buy team to haul in sellers and buyers?”

Walker grinned. “I was informed the chief is personally interested in this case. So you name it, you got it.”

“What I want to do is shake the tree and see if any fruit falls to the ground. So I’d appreciate it if you’d ask every collar if they’ve heard anything about the murder up on the hill Friday night. Or if they saw anything unusual on the street late Friday night. Let ’em know that for the right information we might be ready to deal. If you get any interesting responses, call me. Anytime. Day or night.”

I pulled out a clump of cards that had been stuck in the back of my wallet for the past year, handed Walker the frayed one on top, and asked if I could use a desk for a few minutes.

“Take your pick,” Walker said, pointing to the empty unit.

I called Relovich’s ex-wife and set up an appointment for the late afternoon. Fortunately, I also caught the uncle at home. He said he would be heading down to Berth 73 in an hour to work on his boat. I knew the spot was near Canetti’s Seafood Grotto, a small restaurant on the docks. I could eat a quick lunch and walk over to Relovich’s boat.

When I was a rookie patrol officer, my first training officer gave me some valuable advice, which I always tried to follow: “When you’re on the job, never get wet and never go hungry.”

• • •

I drove from the station to the waterfront and pulled up in front of Canetti’s, a low-slung building that looked like a warehouse, and sat by the window next to a table of fishermen grumbling about the week’s catch. I deboned the grilled rex sole and ate my fish and fried potatoes while I watched the bulky refrigerated trucks rumble to the loading docks at the wholesale seafood market. Brazen seagulls circled overhead, swooping for scraps.

After lunch, I walked down the cracked asphalt dock speckled with bird droppings, past the long-liners that hauled in the big swordfish and the smaller purse seiners and draggers. The breeze carried the ripe smell of gutted fish. I stopped in front of the
Anna Marie
, a rusty, fifty-foot gill-netter with peeling white paint and chipped blue trim. A huge pile of nets and orange buoys was piled up on the dock, covered by a green tarpaulin.

“In those nice, shiny shoes, you gotta watch the bird shit,” Goran Relovich shouted, motioning for me to come aboard. He grabbed two deck chairs, unfolded them, and as he climbed down to the galley, said in a gravelly voice, “I’ll get us some coffee.”

I lugged my briefcase aboard, sat down, and looked off into the distance. Tugs and Coast Guard skiffs chugged past, leaving frothy wakes in the gray water. Across the channel, I could see the sprawl of shipyards on Terminal Island, ringed by tatters of fog.

Relovich emerged from the galley carrying two steaming metal mugs of coffee. He was a tall, wiry man in his seventies with a bristly shock of salt-and-pepper hair and a face as leathery and lined as an old wallet.

He pulled a pint of plum brandy out of his pocket and, hand trembling, poured a dollop into his coffee. “I don’t suppose you want an eye-opener.”

“Some other time.”

I took a sip of the coffee, which smelled as strong as diesel fuel, and said, “I want to extend my sympathies to you. Pete was a good cop.”

Relovich stared out at sea. We sat in silence until I asked, “After Pete left the force, what’d he do?”

“Went out with me on the boat sometimes. Helped around the dock.”

“Why’d he leave the LAPD?”

Relovich set his coffee cup on the desk. “I don’t really know.”

“Why couldn’t he just take some time off? Why couldn’t he hang on seven more years and get his pension?”

“Since his mom and dad died, we became close. But he never told me why.”

“What’s your guess?”

“Maybe he left to get sober. His drinking was getting worse and worse. It broke up his marriage. He had custody of his little girl every other weekend, but it got so bad she didn’t even want to see him. Maybe he figured if he was ever going to beat the bottle, he had to quit the LAPD.”

“So after his wife left him—”

“Who said
she
left
him
?”

I took a sip of coffee waiting for him to explain.

“Pete’s the one who took a hike. As bad as the drinking was, she didn’t want him to leave. Even after they got divorced, I think she was still pissed, still jealous as hell. She’d drive down here all the time and bang on his door at all hours of the night, trying to see if she could catch him in bed with some other broad.”

“Jealous enough to kill him?”

He stared out to sea, watching the wind from the west whip the whitecaps, the foam floating in the air like snowflakes. “Who knows.”

“She ever threaten him?”

“Don’t know.” He pulled a dirty handkerchief out of his back pocket and blew his nose with such force it sounded like the blast of a foghorn. “Pete was a sharp kid. Could have gone as far as he wanted in the police department. But somewhere along the line, he lost his way. Why? I have no damn idea.”

He poured another splash of brandy into his coffee and said, “Pete’s father—my brother—was the smart one. He knew this”—Relovich pointed to the line-up of fishing boats—“was a dying business. He got himself a good job at the LAPD with a pension. All I got was arthritis in my hands from all those cold mornings at sea.” He held up his gnarled fingers, the nails of the thumbs cracked like broken windshields. “Too many damn catch laws. Too many damn government regulations. Too many damn fishing season restrictions. And they’ve overfished the hell out of these waters. Christ, I can remember when the sea here was thick
with sardines. Now you couldn’t find a single one if your life depended on it.”

He downed most of his coffee and tossed the dregs overboard with a flick of his wrist. “If I’d followed my brother in the police department I could be back on the Dalmatian coast right now, snoozing in the sun, collecting my monthly pension check, instead of busting my hump every day for a haul that doesn’t even pay for my fuel.”

I tried to steer him back to the murder. “Was Pete security conscious?”

“He was still a cop at heart. Suspicious as hell. He never opened the door without peeking through the front window to see who was there.”

“Even when he was drinking?”

Relovich cracked a gnarled forefinger. “He hadn’t touched a drop in three months.”

“Any enemies from his days as a cop? Anyone he was concerned about? Any cases that were real problems for him?”

“Don’t think so.”

“Any idea who could have killed him?”

Relovich coughed and spit into the water. “Probably some wetback from the projects.”

After the interview, I headed to my late afternoon meeting with Relovich’s ex-wife, Sandy, in the high desert. Lancaster, the northern tip of the county was more than a hundred miles from San Pedro, the southern tip. Fortunately, because it was a weekend, traffic was light. I sped through downtown, cut over a few freeways, and began to traverse the San Gabriel Mountains. I rolled down a window and inhaled the rich acorny scent of the chaparral. But after I reached the summit and started to slalom down the mountain, I was hit with a blast of desert heat and quickly rolled my window back up and flipped on the air conditioner. San Pedro had been cool and misty, in the low sixties; now it was at least thirty degrees hotter. Southern California, I thought, must have more microclimates than a Brazilian rain forest.

At a roadside lookout bordered by spiky Joshua trees, I stopped and stretched my legs. Everything seemed outsized here: the vast dun-colored expanse; the big sky, scorched white at the horizon and electric
blue overhead; the limitless vistas. I looked back at the San Gabriels, the escarpment veined with snow that sparkled in the brilliant light.