The Deepest Cut (32 page)

A fiftyish man who stood out in a red jacket, crisp white shirt, sedate blue-and-red striped tie, and dark slacks exited an elevator and approached them. His brown hair was receding. He’d gelled what was left so that it stood up, the strands carefully mussed. A wire from an earphone in his ear trailed beneath his jacket. A nametag clipped to his pocket said:
TERRA COSMETIKA SECURITY, D. BALCH.

He walked toward Vining with assured steps. She pegged him as former law enforcement or military.

“Hello, Detective.” He gave her a firm handshake. “Don Balch. How can I help you?”

They exchanged business cards.

“Mr. Balch—”

“Don, please.”

“Is there a place we can talk?”

“Sure. I already spoke with one of your detectives earlier this week about clown man across the street who got himself murdered. Is this about that or something else?”

“I have a couple of things I hope you can help me with.”

“Let’s go to my office.”

Vining said, “Thank you, Matilda.”

When she responded with the flippant “No problem,” Vining mentally corrected her:
You’re welcome.

Balch held open an elevator door until Vining got in. He punched the button for the fourth floor.

“Don, I’m interested in the two CCTV cameras off your loading dock. There’s fresh graffiti in the alley on the back of the tire store down the street. I’m hoping your cameras might have caught the guy.”

“Think it has to do with clown man’s murder?”

“Actually, it’s a threat against me.”

“I see. I’ll get you everything you need. Always glad to help take a bad guy off the streets. I was with the L.A. County Sheriff’s for twenty-five years.”

“Yeah? Where did you work?”

“Fifteen years at the Temple City station. Norwalk before that. Retired as a sergeant five years ago. The first two years of retirement were great, playing golf every day. Never thought I’d get bored, but I did.”

They exited the elevator. The walls were decorated with glossy framed photographs of rain forest flora and fauna interspersed with product shots that Vining recalled from the sales brochure.

“A friend told me the owner of this place, Mrs. Carranza, wanted her own security team. She’d contracted out and wasn’t happy. I talked with her, checked out what she needed, and made her a deal. I set her up with the CCTV and smart-card systems. Hired a crew of watchmen who only carry two-way radios. She was paying for armed guards and didn’t need to. Why have armed guards when the PPD response time is so great? She lets me run the show. I still play golf a couple of times a week.”

“Sounds ideal,” Vining said.

“It’s worked out.”

“The owner seems very security-conscious.”

“She is. She started this company in her kitchen and she takes it personally when someone steals from her. Terra Cosmetika is a high-end product. Some of their face creams sell for five hundred bucks an ounce. Employee theft is a big problem, even with all the controls we have in place. We’ve had a couple of trucks boosted. Not here, thank God, but on the road.”

“Is this building patrolled twenty-four hours?”

“Yes, one of my guys is always here. Most of the employees leave at five, but they have people on the customer service desk twenty-four/seven. Mrs. Carranza doesn’t believe in outsourcing. She’s very hands-on about how she runs her company.”

Vining read between the lines and deduced that the owner was a control freak.

At the end of the hall, they reached a windowed door with
SECURITY
painted on it.

Balch took a smart card from his pocket and held it up to the electronic eye beside the door. The door unlocked and he pushed it open for Vining. She entered a large office that faced the corner of Orange Grove and Newcastle. Arrayed on a wall were framed photos of Balch and his six security officers with their names on plastic plaques beneath.

Vining looked them over. Some seemed familiar. She recognized one guy as a PPD officer applicant who had washed out.

A clean-cut young Latino who was dressed similarly to Balch looked up from where he sat behind a counter. His nametag said
A. MONTOYA.

“Albert, this is Detective Vining from the Pasadena PD.”

Montoya stood to shake her hand.

“Here’s the closed-circuit monitoring system.” Balch led her behind the counter where there was a row of television screens. Each had a label describing the areas being monitored and carried a split screen of broadcasts from at least two and as many as four cameras. The views changed continuously as feeds from different cameras were rotated.

Vining was impressed. “Is there any corner of this building that’s not under surveillance?”

“The bathrooms. Mrs. Carranza wanted cameras there, but I talked her out of it,” Balch said with a laugh.

He pointed to a monitor. “This one shows the feed from the two cameras you’re interested in. They’re set up to cover the loading dock, but they capture some of the alley, too.”

“The tire store is two doors west of you. Can you enlarge the image from the camera facing that way?”

“Sure,” Montoya said. He typed at a keyboard. The split screen disappeared. They watched as a large truck backed into the loading dock.

“The resolution’s not great,” Balch said. “You can’t see the rear wall of the tire shop, but the camera would have caught anyone walking down the alley.”

“Could I have the surveillance recording for the past week from this camera?”

“Can you do that, Albert?”

Montoya again typed commands. “I’ll copy it onto a DVD for you.”

“Thanks. Do your guards do foot patrols around the property?” Vining asked.

“Every hour or so, we’ll take a stroll inside the building and around the perimeter outside,” Balch said. “I’ll ask our night-shift guys, Eduardo Gonzalez and Tanner Persons, whether they saw anything.”

Vining scanned the CCTV monitors, taking a virtual tour of the building operations. Something on one of the monitors made her move in for a closer look. It was broadcasting a clear shot of the street in front of the building and the corner where Scrappy had last worked.

“Could I also get the feed from that camera for the past two weeks?”

“Sure thing.”

While Vining was watching, a person in a wheelchair rolled down Newcastle to the corner of Orange Grove. She blinked and realized her eyes were playing tricks on her. It wasn’t a wheelchair, but a bicycle. A man got off the bike and leaned it against the wall of the building there and approached the human directional in the gorilla suit.

“Albert, can you focus in on that corner?” Vining asked.

“Absolutely.”

The camera zoomed in closer. They watched as the guy on the bicycle, who was in street clothes, took the large arrow from the guy in the gorilla suit, who then walked toward a car parked on Orange Grove.

“Must be relieving gorilla man for a break,” Balch said. “Who knew that holding an arrow is so important, they can’t leave that corner unmanned.”

“You ever see anything funny with those guys?” Vining asked.

“You mean other than being there day and night? Nope. We’ve had our eye on them. I thought they were casing us. As time goes on and nothing happens, I’m thinking, maybe not. I’ve gone over there and talked to them. They all have the same story. ‘I’m paid to stand here and twirl this sign. I don’t ask questions.’”

“Did you report them to the police?”

“After the first two weeks, I did. Whoever I got in dispatch sounded like she’d had complaints about arrow guys before. She said there was nothing the police could do if all they were doing was standing on the street, not bothering anyone. I took things into my own hands. I make sure that my guys on each shift go over there to say hello, just so they know that we’re watching. I’ve got a funny feeling that they’re up to something, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

The guy on the corner was doing acrobatics with the arrow, twirling it over his head and around his back, dropping it, picking it up, and twirling it again.

Montoya held up his hand to indicate the television monitor. “I see these guys all over the city with those arrows. What kind of a job is that?”

“He’s a human directional,” Vining said. “It’s a skilled profession.”

“Looks like a skilled joke to me,” Balch said.

THIRTY-TWO

A
FTER VINING LEFT TERRA COSMETIKA, SHE DROVE ACROSS ORANGE
Grove and turned onto Newcastle. She stopped near the guy with the arrow. She recognized him. He was George Holguin, an ex-con and a longtime member of Scrappy’s gang, the NLK— Northwest Latin Kings. He had voluntarily come into the station along with Marvin Li’s other employees, but he had spoken with someone other than Vining. He didn’t know who she was, but Vining suspected he’d made the Crown Vic as a cop car.

She rolled down the window. “Where are the apartments that are for rent?”

He swung the arrow to indicate Newcastle Street. “Up there. You’ll see them.”

“Thanks.” Don Balch was correct— the arrow guys’ stories were consistent. She continued up Newcastle.

Small World War II-era stucco homes lined both sides of the street. The residential neighborhood was being squeezed by burgeoning development on Orange Grove and Mountain. The neighborhood was still reasonably well kept, with most of the lawns green and mowed, the houses well painted, and the roofs in good shape.

At the corner of Mountain, Vining saw Victor Chang standing
with an arrow. He was wearing a red Aaron’s Aarrows polo shirt and a plush toy dog on top of his head like a hat.

Something about Chang bothered Vining. All of Marvin Li’s other employees were hard-core gangbangers and ex-cons. Li had given them the first honest job they’d ever had. Chang, however, had graduated from San Marino High School and completed a few courses at Cal State L.A., though he wasn’t currently enrolled there. His criminal record was clean.

Marvin Li had explained that he’d taken eighteen-year-old Chang under his wing to save him from the gangbanger lifestyle. To Vining, that would entail Li keeping on top of Chang’s activities, going out for meals or a baseball game, being a father figure, not having the young man stand on a street corner with a stuffed dog on his head and hanging around with a crew of criminals.

Vining spotted the PPD’s surveillance vehicle on Newcastle south of Mountain. It was a Yukon Denali with tinted windows that the PPD had confiscated from drug dealers.

She pulled to the curb near Chang, grabbed her digital camera, and got out of the car. She had interviewed him at the PPD about Scrappy’s murder. Like the rest of Li’s employees, Chang said he didn’t know anything about it and it had been a complete shock. Vining felt that he, and the others, had been telling the truth. Still, none of them would submit to polygraphs.

“Hi Victor. What’s going on?”

He shrugged. “Working.” Holding the arrow by the two handles on the back, he passed it around his back, like a basketball.

“Isn’t it humiliating, standing on a street corner, wearing a toy dog on your head?”

“Are you trying to humiliate me?”

“Mind if I take your picture?”

“Yes.”

She’d already snapped him before he protested. In the next shot, she caught him flipping her off.

“I told you I didn’t want you to take my picture.”

She put the camera inside her pants pocket. “I heard you. Say, Victor … you’re a smart guy. Why don’t you get a real job?”

“Why are you jacking me up? I’m not bothering anybody.”

“You’re bothering me. Why are you standing here? You already told me you’re working. Tell me something new.”

He again twirled the arrow around his back, then grabbed both ends and jumped over it, like a jump rope.

“Where are those apartments you’re advertising?”

“I don’t have to talk to you.”

“Victor, I’m just asking where the apartments are. Why are you so upset?”

“I’m not upset.”

“You just flipped me off.”

“I don’t like talking to cops.”

“Why? You been in trouble?”

He muttered something under his breath.

“What did you say?” She could see him struggling to keep his anger under control.

“Are you done?”

“No, I’m not done. I won’t be done until I find out what you’re up to out here, advertising apartments that don’t exist.”

He walked away from her and continued his acrobatics with the arrow.

Vining returned to her car. She called Sergeant Early to tell her what she’d learned at Terra Cosmetika and on Newcastle Street. “Any possibility of assigning a couple of cadets to go through the CCTV recordings?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Early said. “Countless hours of tedious work will cure them of any notions about the glamour of police work.”

Vining laughingly agreed. “Any updates from the surveillance team?”

“They haven’t seen any unusual traffic patterns that would indicate criminal activity. No people coming and going at all hours. The street rolls up at eight o’clock at night. It’s all normal.”

“Except for the arrows guys in costume standing on each corner most of the night.”

“If there was drug activity on that block, they’ve put a lid on it since Scrappy’s murder. You’d think the arrow guys would have disappeared, too.”

“I want to check out everyone who lives on that block of Newcastle,” Vining said. “I don’t know what Li’s up to, but he’s up to something.”

“Where are you off to now?”

“Gonna meet with Sergeant John Velado, the San Gabriel Valley Asian gang specialist at the Temple City Sheriff’s station. See if I can get information about Vctor Chang. And I might pay Marvin Li another call.”

“You taking Caspers?”

“I’d rather have him checking names on Newcastle Street.” Vining remembered that Caspers had been more of a hindrance than a help the last time they’d interviewed Li.

“Keep me informed. Stay safe.”

Vining drove off, taking a look around and glancing in her rearview mirror, ever watchful for a shadowy figure that could be T. B. Mann.

“KICKER CHANG.” SERGEANT VELADO LAUGHED AS HE LOOKED AT THE PHOTO
on Vining’s camera. “What’s he got on his head?”