The Disposables (26 page)

Correct, if you wanted to follow procedure. Didn't matter if we could prove I hadn't done it. Protocol dictated Homicide handles the disposition or gets their nose bent out of shape. I had interrogated too many suspects and interviewed too many victims. Fong held something back. I opened the door.

Fong broke leather, pulled his gun. “Don't.”

I put my foot out on the curb.

Fong pointed the large handgun at me.

I looked at Mack and slid out. Mack put his hand on the gun, lowered it.

Fong said nothing.

I closed the door, got down on one knee, leaned in. “What do you have my girl for?”

“Aiding and abetting a felon.” Mack said in a lowered voice.

“If you no longer have the felon then how can she be abetting?” My heart started to soar upward into the cloudless night.

“There's—” Fong started to say.

Mack held up his hand to quiet him. “There's the other charge.”

He yanked me back down to earth. I got up and walked around the front of the car, the headlights off. I wanted to see his eyes. He rolled down his window.

I put my hands on the ledge and got a little closer. All this time no one had mentioned the kids. They sat like the elephant in the room.

I said, “What other charge?” My throat went dry, my voice cracked.

He waited a long interminable minute. “You know, Bruno.”

“Say it.” I said, the bottom dropping out of my world. What did they have? Was it enough to hold her? Was it enough to hold me, and he was just going to let me walk because of what had happened between us? If so, I couldn't let it go down that way. I would have to get back in the car, take the fall with her.

“What it's always been about.” His pale blue eyes, sad.

“What? Say it. I want you to say it.”

“The kids.”

A large knot rose up in my chest. To deny it disrespected the man, someone I had grown to like. I tried to speak, my voice sandpaper at the back of my throat. “You guys don't have a case.”

He didn't move. My heart skipped. I watched his eyes.

“No, we don't have a case.”

I stood and looked down the street as my eyes teared up, that old emotional man thing again. I said, “Then you're going to release her?”

“The FBI is coming down in the morning to put a hold on her. They're adopting the case.”

I rode that same roller coaster back down into the basement. “You could go in and blue sheet her tonight. You could do that.”

“It'd be my job.”

I wanted to tell him so much. Tell him about each child, the untenable environments, the sadistic physical abuse, and the system set up to protect them that put them right back into harm's way. I couldn't help it, I threw my trump card. I leaned back in, the tears heavy in my eyes, said, “You got a cigarette?”

Mack never looked away, “Man, I'm soaked in gasoline and you wanna smoke?” He smiled. “I got to get these things off. You take care of yourself.” When he put it in drive, the red brake lights lit up the dark street. He didn't move.

He finally said, “You're not going after Jumbo, are you?”

I shook my head.

He said, “I didn't think so. Tell Wicks—tell him I'm the one that let the junkyard dog loose on his ass. You got about a two-hour lead, enough for me to do the paper on this case, then I'll be right behind you.”

He hit the gas. The back tires screeched.

“What about my girl?”

He didn't stop or even slow down. The purple-black night slammed down. It took my breath away. I started running.

In all the years on the street I learned one sure thing about the mind of a crook: how, when faced with adversity, a bold and brash act can pull your cookies out of the fire. I checked Wicks's house in Rosemead, burned forty minutes of the two hours Mack doled out, and found it dark and cold. If time worked for me rather than against me, I would sit and wait. Instead, I chose bold and brash.

One cold night in Compton, I stood in the parking lot of Rosco's Market sipping coffee under the eave, in the lee of the wind, along with Mark Hocks, a rookie deputy in possession of a mere six months on the street. He'd called the meet, bought the coffee, and found it difficult to ask the question, the true excuse for the get-together. He wanted to know the secret to being a good street cop, how to make not just good arrests but great arrests. Honored, I didn't know how to respond. I told him to always be suspicious and not look for the crime, don't wait for the probable cause, watch the behavior. Behavior will give it away every time. Someone looks like a crook, go up and have a chat with him. I told Mark all of this while we watched the street, the cars going by in the icy rain. A white Honda Accord pulled in and got gas just as I was about to leave. The car—I thought it the same car anyway—white Hondas in Southern California were the same as
snowflakes in Aspen—had gone by on the street and now it came back to gas up.

I tossed the rest of the burnt coffee poured from the pot inside and, without telling Mark, walked over to talk to the driver. Both of our black-and-white cop cars sat in plain view to all. The driver of the white Honda got out, saw the uniform, and immediately looked around, a rabbit about to flee. I grabbed onto his open black leather jacket by the front and said, “Don't. Don't.” At the same time, I felt his waistband on the right side, found a .38. I pulled his gun, slammed him on the hood of the Honda, stuck his own gun in his ear, and told him not to breathe. Mark dropped his coffee, drew his gun, and ran over to help. The Honda was stolen. Jed Ashe also carried in his right shirt pocket a half ounce of rock cocaine. When asked by Mark what the hell he thought he was doing pulling into get gas with two cops standing in the parking lot, Jed said, “Didn't think you'd tumble to me if I acted like nothin' was wrong.”

I chose bold and brash. It didn't work for Jed, but I wasn't Jed. I drove my boosted car into the parking lot of Montclair Police Station, forty miles east of Los Angeles, another forty minutes gone. It left only forty minutes to get the information I needed and get back to Los Angeles.

The little burg of Montclair sat quiet in the dark night, light from the front window warm and inviting, as a soft invitation to Joe Citizen. I walked into the front lobby, a little bebop in my step that bespoke, “nothing wrong here.” I'm Joe Citizen making an inquiry. The lobby waiting area contained two gray Naugahyde couches, two glass cases with awards for the top cops, and pictures on the wall of the city council and mayor. On the other side of the counter, the blue-suited cop stood and came to the thick bulletproof Plexiglas. “Can I help
you?” The sound came out metallic with some sort of audio boost.

“Yes. I would like to speak with Barbara White.”

Barbara kept her own last name, a professional consideration. Long ago at a barbecue, she confided she didn't like the name Barbara Wicks not after being White all of her life.

“What's this in reference to?”

“It's a personal matter.”

“What's your name?”

No way did I think the L.A. cops put out a BOLO for me, especially one that would reach this far out into the next county. Local maybe, not this far out. Still, I hesitated, “Can you just tell her Bruno is here to see her.”

“Bruno who?”

I didn't answer.

“Have a seat.” He turned, picked up the phone, dialed a number, and he watched me as he spoke. The person on the other end said something, the cop turned to reply, as if I could read his lips. I fought the urge to bolt.

He put the phone down and stared at me. My heart raced. He came over to the counter, slowly moved his hand to the edge out of view. Behind me, over at the front door a solenoid bolt shot home. He'd locked me in.

The door that led to the back of the station opened. The woman in uniform did not smile. It took a long second to realize Barbara had aged a great deal since our last meeting. I tried to remember how long ago and knew not enough time had passed to warrant the quick degradation of youth. She'd lost weight. Where the curves on her hips used to beckon a man, they now showed too much bone, her uniform pants cinched up with a black basket weave belt. Gray sprouted in the part of her once lustrous brown hair.

“What are you doing here, Bruno?”

I looked at the desk officer, then back at her.

“All right, come on back.” She held the door open. She wore a black automatic in a pancake holster on her side, her oval badge shiny and new. I followed her into her office. She walked behind her desk and turned, “You shouldn't be here. You're putting me in a bad position.”

I sat down to stop the quaking knees. “Congratulations on your promotion. Lieutenant. That's great.”

She came around her desk and closed the watch commander's door. “Let's can the bullshit, huh? What do you want?”

It hurt for her to talk to me this way. I didn't know how much she knew, how much Robby told her about me, but we'd been good friends not all that long ago. I said nothing.

She went back around and sat at her desk. The only sound in the room the radio. She monitored her shift beat units answering calls for service.

I spoke first. “I thought we were friends.”

“We were until you went over to the other team. What do you want, Bruno? You have thirty seconds.”

“I'm looking for Robby.”

“Funny, he's looking for you.”

“When's the last time you saw him?”

Her hard expression cracked, it softened. “We're through. We split a couple of weeks ago.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't know.” They were the perfect couple. Although, I always thought she loved him more than he loved her. Now, standing on the outside looking in, seeing the past from a different perspective, I realized he may have been in love more with himself with nothing left over for her, at least not enough to hold the relationship together.

Her eyes misted. She turned, slid open the window that accessed the dispatch area, spoke to people I couldn't see, “Tell Four Paul Three, not to take code seven until he handles that
missing person and then tell Four Sam One I want him to call me ASAP.” She slid the window closed. The conscientious supervisor, she'd been monitoring the cop talk on the radio all the while conversing with me.

I wanted to go around and hug her to help quell her emotional pain. “What happened?”

“What always happens? He met someone else.” She looked away, her chin quivered. “It's my fault.”

“No it's not, Barb.”

She looked back her eyes aflame. “You don't know shit. You have no idea how I respected you, the both of you. I envied you going to work with him everyday, all the overtime, seeing him more than I did. Then you went bad, you made him shoot you. It ruined him. That's when it really started, three years ago.”

Derek Sams ruined more lives than he would've ever known; my daughter, my grandson, my father, and now Wicks and his wife, Barbara. The insidious tentacles of narcotics burrow deep into the fabric of society.

I wanted to lay it all at his door, but couldn't. I had to own up to my own actions, my own choices.

Shame rose up and heated my face. I wanted to tell her I didn't ask Wicks to shoot. He didn't have to. I was going to give up. He didn't give me a chance. He never gave me the chance.

She continued her rant. “You went bad, then he followed right along behind you.”

I moved to the edge of my chair. “He went bad? What happened? What're you talking about?”

“The FBI popped him, civil-rights violation. A bad shoot by one of his men. They told him they were going to go back five years to investigate his team and their cases. Look into the culture, the tattoos, a real full-court press.”

“He's too good. They'd never make him on any of it.”

“I told him that. He was okay for a while, until the pressure got to him. He said he was too old to start over. Even if he beat it, the department, the same people he made all those sensational cases for, demoted him to work in the jail, the watch commander at MCJ while they conducted an internal investigation. It killed him, Bruno. One week in that smelly hole and he was ready to sell out his mother.”

The shame left and in sauntered fear, cold with a knife-hard edge. I saw where this was going.

“They flipped him,” she said, “They flipped the great Robby Wicks. The man who knew the game better than the FBI. The FBI told him all his problems would all go away if he did one thing. Just one. Something they couldn't do themselves in eighteen months of trying with all their assets. You would have thought with all their satellites, high-tech surveillance devices, the relaxed constitution for terrorism they'd be able to follow one ex-con. Something he refused to get involved in until they played dirty pool.”

She waited for me to say it.

I couldn't. I said nothing.

“Yeah,” she said, “you know, it's your fault. That's why I can't believe you had the balls to come here. Say it, Bruno. You know what they want. You didn't need to come here for me to tell you. Say it.”

I loved and respected her too much, I said it. My voice cracked. “Wally Kim. They want Wally Kim.” The Korean kid, the diplomat's son.

She said, “That's right. Kim put a lot of pressure on the State Department, who in turn pressured the Justice Department.”

“I'm sorry, Barbara; it's no longer about that. It's Robby, he—”

She turned pale, sat down, “What? What's happened?”

Of course, she still loved him and cared what happened to him. They had been together too many years. I didn't know how to say it, so I used Mack's words, “He's gone off the reservation.”

“How bad?”

I couldn't answer that one. I couldn't say the words to her. She stood on the fringe about to be pulled into the vortex of this awful shit storm, one initiated by my actions. Her eyes bore right into me. The phone rang.