Street Rules (2 page)

After Gail released the bodies and when SID was all done, Frank met the rest of the 93 Squad back at the Figueroa station. She gathered them at M&M’s for breakfast, and while they ordered and drank coffee, Nook and Bobby filled their colleagues in. Neighbors said Julio’s brother, Luis, lived in the garage behind the house. No one had seen him since yesterday, but one of the neighbors ID’d his car at the house after she heard the shots fired. The car was gone by the time Lewis and Munoz arrived.

“Yeah,” Bobby added, “and we found an empty gun bag in the garage, just lying on his bed.”

Smoothing his silk tie Ike Zabbo said, “Sweet.”

Next to Nook, he was Frank’s oldest, most seasoned detective. Before he’d transferred to Homicide, Ike had worked Narcotics at Hollywood. He told his colleagues he knew Barracas fairly well, but couldn’t figure what had gotten him into this mess. While the waitress delivered platters of eggs and pancakes, the detectives speculated on what SID would find. They’d lifted prints from the garage and the detectives were curious to see if they’d match any found on the beer cans or Dorito bag. Frank pulled her crew off their current cases to focus on this one and she delegated assignments.

“Taquito,” she said to Lou Diego, “You and Ike canvass the neighborhood. I’ll try and shake a couple uniforms loose for you, take a look around for the shotgun. Noah, you and Johnnie go back to the office-“

“Aw, come on, Frank,” Johnnie Briggs protested, as Frank knew he would. She checked his condition this morning, pleased to see his eyes clear and hands steady. She turned her attention to Noah Jantzen, who finished her sentence around a mouthful of hash browns.

“And find out whatever we can about Julio and Barracas.”

Frank nodded, “Run a trace on Luis’ car. Nook and Bobby, go over to Claudia Estrella’s, see what she knows about her brother’s whereabouts.”

“I don’t think it’s him,” Johnnie announced, chewing on a piece of toast.

Noah mocked his partner, begging, “Enlighten us, oh please, Wise One.”

“Simple,” Johnnie obliged. “The dog. Why would somebody who lives there risk the extra hassle of killing the family pet? Julio and Barracas posed the most threat. And maybe the oldest kid. Once they were eliminated, the rest of the family was cake. If Luis lived there, the dog knew him. He wouldn’t have had to take him out. But what if the suspect’s someone the dog didn’t know? Man, if
I
walked into a house and there was a pit bull staring at me — blam — I’d take him out right away. A stranger’d
have
to waste the dog. He’d take that extra little risk. Where was the dog laying?”

Hm, Bobby murmured. “That’s interesting. It was right by the back door and it must have been shot right away because I don’t remember seeing any dog prints. Do you?” he asked Frank and Nook. They both shook their heads and Johnnie smirked, “See? Whoever did it took the dog out when he walked into the house. You live there, you’re not worried about the dog. You’re a stranger — booyah — out he goes, ASAR”

Noah marveled, “Don’t we all sleep better at night knowing Johnnie’s out there?”

“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first,” Johnnie gloated. Frank admitted he had a point, but Luis Estrella still looked like their best lead.

As the 93rd filed out chomping on toothpicks, Noah stayed at the register with Frank. He asked, “Doc Law say when she’d get around to the posts?”

It wasn’t unusual to wait two or three days for an autopsy, so when Frank replied, “Sometime this afternoon,” Noah whistled in admiration.

“Sure pays to have the inside track,” he teased.

“Hey, I didn’t ask her,” Frank shrugged. “She volunteered.”

Lowering his voice, Noah said, “That’s ‘cause she
likes
you.”

“Don’t start with that old auntie crap,” Frank warned her ex-partner.

Lifting his eyes to the ceiling, Noah sighed, “And this is the thanks I get.”

Frank pushed him toward the door.

“I’ll thank you when you get our Dog Killer. Let’s go.”

Normally Frank didn’t tell the next of kin about the victim’s death until after she’d questioned them, but she didn’t have the stomach for that with Jimmy Barracas’ widow. And maybe because Lorrie Barracas had been expecting the news ever since she’d been married, she reacted stoically when Frank told her, graciously offering to answer a few questions. She didn’t know of any specific threats against her husband, but as she pointed out, “When you’re a cop, threats are made against you every day.”

Jimmy Barracas was Julio Estrella’s nephew. When Frank asked what sort of relationship they had, Mrs. Barracas proudly said that Jimmy had assumed the role of surrogate father after his sister’s husband died. Jimmy was close to his niece, Claudia, and his nephews.

“Even Luis?”

“Of course,” his widow answered. “Jimmy’s as—”

She caught her mistake.

“Oh, my. I guess I’ll have to get used to saying was. Jimmy was … as good as gold to that boy.”

The correction was painful and Frank gave Mrs. Barracas a moment to pull herself together. When she had, she continued, “He was too good, if you ask me. We had a lot of fights about Louie. Every dime Jimmy ever gave that boy went straight into his arm.”

Frank didn’t care for ambiguity, asking exactly what Mrs. Barracas meant.

“He’s been fixing since he was fourteen. He’ll shoot anything he can get into a needle, but heroin’s his drug of choice.”

Frank wasn’t surprised. Claudia Estrella had chipped for years and Frank asked how her husband had felt about that, being a narcotics officer.

Lorrie Barracas shrugged.

“He was resigned to it. What could he do? The kids were older and they lived with their mother. Such as she was,” Mrs. Barracas sniffed.

Frank had dim memories of a large, unwashed woman who sat in a dark room, staring out the window and drinking sweet wine.

Frank asked if she had any idea where Luis was and she said no, she hadn’t had heard from him in three or four days.

“What happened then?”

“He called for Jimmy.”

“Do you know what they talked about?”

“Business, I’m sure.”

“What sort of business?”

An impatient gesture told Frank that the widow’s brave front was fading.

“Jimmy set the boys up with a courier service. Cops always need things delivered here and there so Jimmy supplied the customers and the boys did the work.”

“Mrs. Barracas, you’ve been extremely helpful. I know this is terribly difficult for you, but if you could just bear with me for a few more questions …”

“Of course,” she answered, gamely masking the strain. She told Frank what she knew about the business, which wasn’t much, and provided names and phone numbers of her husband’s two closest friends. As is common with cops, they were his ex-partners.

Frank thanked Lorrie Barracas for her time and patience, leaving her with the standard appeal to call if she thought of anything else, anything at all, no matter how silly it might seem.

On her way over she’d passed a Peet’s and now she went back to it. Sitting in the parking lot, she considered the phone numbers Lorrie Barracas had given her. She poked one into the cell phone, but didn’t hit “send”. Telling Barracas’ wife had been bad enough. Telling his partners would definitely have to wait until she was well fortified with designer coffee.

The day dragged on but by late afternoon Frank managed to get to the coroners office. Cause, manner, and mode of death were blatantly obvious in the Estrella case, so she didn’t really need to be there, and at least one of the boys would attend, most likely Bobby as Nook always managed to weasel out of being the attending detective. But because bodies sometimes gave up unexpected clues, and because ME’s often rendered opinions that couldn’t be printed in a protocol, Frank attended autopsies whenever she could. Gowning up, she tried to figure who was being cut. Gail had just started on Barracas and it looked like the Mangier was finishing with Marta Estrella. Bobby was watching a new baby-faced ME peel someone’s scalp over his face. From the brands it looked like Julio.

“How we doing?” she asked him.

“Well, we still don’t know where Luis is. Seems like he’s got a pretty bad jones, so maybe he’s on the nod somewhere. I asked Claudia who his main suppliers were, but she wouldn’t say. If he’s as bad as she says he is, I wouldn’t imagine he’d go too far away for too long.”

“Talk to anybody at Narco?”

“Not yet. We talked to some sources, a couple baseheads. Nook’s checking on some of the names they gave us.”

“When was the last time Claudia saw him?”

“Friday. He stopped by to borrow some money. She fed him and he hung around for a couple hours, playing with Gloria’s kids. She didn’t say much, neither did Gloria, but they know something.”

“Too quiet?” Frank guessed and Bobby nodded, “Too evasive, too vague.”

“I’ll stop by later, see if I can’t squeeze some blood out. You know Barracas set the boys up in some sort of courier service?”

Bobby shook his head and Frank told him to check every service in the phone book.

“Wife said Barracas set it up because cops always need deliveries and that he supplied the nephews with customers. Talked to the partners. They didn’t know much about it. Went by Hollywood and no one had heard of this alleged service. Depending on what you find, we might want to subpoena some IRS records.”

Bobby recorded their conversation into his notebook, mentioning that he’d managed to get a good picture from Claudia.

“It shows him from the waist up, showing off his tats. The guy’s got stars inked all over him. You know Estrella means star in Spanish?”

Bobby never asked rhetorical questions so Frank shook her head that she didn’t know that.

“I dropped the picture off and Donna’s making a bulletin. She thought she’d have it by shift change.”

“Good.”

Gail and a massive black tech were turning Barracas onto his back, and Frank asked, “How’s it going so far, Doc?”

“I just got started. I had to do a missing kid that finally turned up. Well, at least parts of him turned up. It looks like a mountain lion got him, mauled him pretty badly. That’s my second mountain lion attack already this year.”

“Where’d they find him?”

“Out around Malibu somewhere. I guess somebody’s dog dragged one of his arms home. Can you imagine?”

“Yech,” the tech said, “That’s why I have cats.”

“Me, too,” Gail replied. To Frank she said, “We did Marta Estrella already. She was about six weeks pregnant.”

“Make that seven and a dog,” Frank noted.

Gail looked up sharply, then said to her tech, “Charlie, see if you can find me some vinyl gloves.”

“We’re out. We’ve been out for weeks.”

“Check for me anyway.”

“Okay.”

The doc finished a dictation, then clicked her recorder off.

“What’s going to happen to Estrella’s little boy? Is there any family any he can stay with?”

“I don’t know. CPS’ll handle that. Maybe he’ll stay with his aunt, Julio’s sister. Might become a 300 kid.”

Frank referred to the legal code wherein a child was mandated to the care and custody of the state. Gail flicked a curious glance her way, asking, “Did you mean what you said to Hunt last night?”

“What did I say?”

“When he accused you of being maternal, you said it wasn’t maternal, just business. Was that true?”

Frank thought about the question.

“The kid had just seen his whole family butchered. He was petrified. Hunt’s got about as much compassion as a bullet. He wouldn’t have understood if I’d told him anything else.”

Gail returned her attention to a fading cut on Barracas’ forearm.

“Why?” Frank quizzed.

“Because what you said was so cold. I didn’t want to believe you could be so heartless.”

Charlie came back.

“No gloves,” he said. Without looking up from her work, the doc thanked him, her eyes crinkling in a smile. Frank almost smiled too, realizing that Gail knew damn good and well there weren’t any gloves around.

Frank was summoned to the Estrella’s at 9:47 PM on Sunday night. By 7:00 PM Tuesday she and her detectives had worked around the clock, through the most critical hours following a homicide. They were beat, and Frank sent everyone home. That’s where she should have headed to, but she was working her way to the Alibi on surface streets. The freeway might have been faster but Frank wanted the comfort of the old roads. It pleased her to pass a Rexall that used to be a jazz club where Duke Ellington played. A little farther down the block she’d made her first collar. Two streets down, she and Noah had responded to a domestic and almost been knocked out by a charging 400-pound woman. At the corner of Avalon and 51 she slowed to admire a brand new strike. It was so fresh the paint still glinted.

Old English letters, four feet high in blue and orange, cryptically announced “W52K-R213.” As dusk lowered around the swirling letters, their highly-stylized tips seemed to twitch and flicker like flames. Frank didn’t need to stare long to know who’d done the strike.

Passing the next side street, she caught the artist’s familiar, bad-ass shuffle half way down the block. Placa Estrella, revered OG of the 52nd Street Kings, was deep into Playboy territory. Taking out an old gangster like Placa would be a hell of a coup for an up and coming rival. Frank pulled up alongside her, watching Placa’s hand move to her waist. The girl braced, waiting for the gun barrel to come poking out the window. Frank rolled ahead so Placa could see who she was. Only then did she roll the window down.

“Aren’t you in the wrong neighborhood?” she called, driving beside her.

“I got a right to be here.”

“Playboy’s might not agree with you,” Frank countered. Placa shrugged, kept walking.

“Want a ride?”

Placa shook her head, her long braid like an anchor to the sidewalk.

“Okay. I asked you nice, now I’m
telling
you to get in.”

Placa planted her feet and glared.

“What I gotta get in for? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Bet you’re strapped. Want me to pat you?”