Three Shirt Deal (2008) (22 page)

"I don't believe that as a division commander, you can represent him, Lieutenant," Sheppard said softly.

"Yes, I can." She fixed hard eyes on him. "You don't have all the facts, so don't push this, Arnie. I'll dropkick you out that window."

Man, I love Alexa when she gets like this. I fought to keep my expression stern.

"Anyway, it really doesn't matter whether I can or can't because I'm filing a writ of mandamus on Shane's behalf to strike this whole proceeding," Alexa said.

She handed the lone piece of paper to Cal, who looked down, holding the sheet like it just came off the bottom of a birdcage. Then he handed it to Captain Detorsky, who handed it to Sheppard. Each of them in turn stared at it in disbelief.

"We're filing that pursuant to the Code of Civil Procedure one-oh-eight-five," she said. "The writ requests an inquiry into whether the department proceeded without, or in an excess of, its jurisdiction, and whether there was any prejudicial abuse of discretion. It is the contention of the accused that he was suspended without pay a full day before his supervisor's review and eleven days before his Skelly hearing, and that said action denied him his protections under Paragraph Six of the Police Bill of Rights."

"He was suspended?" Sheppard sputtered. "By who?"

"By me," Alexa said. "In my role as head of the Detective Division, I suspended him without cause, and in so doing, violated his rights of discovery and due process."

She stood and motioned to me and Bob. "Come on, guys. We're out of here."

I followed my wife and my union rep into the hall. There was mass confusion in the office behind us as they started passing her writ of mandamus around, all talking at once.

I looked at Utley. "Can we do that?"

"She's your division commander. If she suspended you before the Skelly, then this case is over on a technicality."

I turned to give Alexa a hug, but when I did, I saw that she had already disappeared. I scanned the fifth floor to the elevators, but she was nowhere in sight.

Chapter
28.

IN LESS THAN A MINUTE, I MADE IT UP TO ALEXA'S OFFICE using the stairs. I found Ellen standing in the outer office talking to the Detective Bureau Deputy Assistant Commander, Chuck Ward, who was holding a thick case folder. Both of them turned as I bolted through the door.

"Where's Alexa?" I blurted.

"Gone. I think she went down to the fifth floor to see you," Ellen said. "She left her review almost twenty minutes ago. Haven't seen her since then."

"I'll come back at a more convenient time." Chuck Ward turned and left quickly.

"What's going on?"

"Alexa's been replaced. Chuck's the new interim head of division now."

"Tony relieved her?"

Ellen looked sad, but tried to put a good face on it. "Listen, Shane. Maybe it's for the best. It's been a nightmare around here. I think she needs to work on getting better, first."

"You don't know where she went?"

"Home, I guess."

I left, got in my car, and blew out of the police garage. I tried her cell. Nothing. It went straight to voice mail. I tried our house--same thing. I made it home in forty minutes, which is excellent time, even for me.

Alexa wasn't there. I went outside and looked up the canal path, thinking that maybe she was walking around the neighborhood breathing in the ocean air and trying to calm herself down. I didn't see her.

I called her cell again, left a second urgent message, then got in the MDX and took off for USC. She might have gone there to see Chooch.

I arrived in record time, mostly by cheating and using my flashers and siren.

It was a little past five by the time I arrived at Howard Jones Field. I found Chooch in a receiver and quarterback meeting of fifteen guys in the east end zone. All of them had taken a knee and were gathered around a position coach at the center of the circle. I spoke to an assistant and had Chooch pulled out of the group. We found a spot on the sidelines where we could talk.

"Has Alexa tried to reach you?" I asked.

"I don't know. I don't think so."

"Where's your cell?"

"It's . . . it's in. . . . What's going on?"

I told him that Alexa had failed her administration review and was being replaced as the head of the Detective Bureau. I told him how she came down and saved my ass in Cal's office by burying herself even deeper and admitting that she illegally suspended me before my Skelly hearing.

"Maybe that was her plan all along," Chooch suggested. "Maybe that's why she did it, so she could use that to help you later."

It didn't sound like Alexa to me. She was too much of a Girl Scout for that kind of blatant manipulation. Then I realized that I

couldn't swear to that right now because I really didn't know her anymore. I had no idea what she would now regard as acceptable behavior.

"Chooch, if she calls I need to talk to her. I'm worried."

Chooch reached out and took my arm. "Dad, don't leave her."

"Where did that come from?"

"I know you're thinking about it. I know you."

"I'm not thinking about it." But of course, that wasn't true.

"I know who she is," Chooch said. "We both do. I don't believe God makes us one way, then changes who we are. I think a person's soul is given at birth. It's specific and unchangeable. Character isn't just about brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. That's not what determines who we are."

"Sometimes I don't even recognize her anymore," I admitted.

"I know it's hard, Dad. But you've got to give this some time-- years even. If you can't do it for her, then hang on for me. Will you promise?"

I stood looking at my son and wondering how he'd gotten so strong and so spiritual. Did that come from Alexa, or did it get passed down it genetically from his birth mother?

"Okay," I finally said, softly. "I promise."

"Let's go check and see if she's called my cell," Chooch said.

He told the assistant coach that we had a personal emergency and that he'd be right back. We walked to the locker room where he pulled out his cell phone and checked it for messages.

"Three calls from her in the last hour," he said.

"Call her back."

Chooch dialed Alexa back but her phone went to voice mail.

"She's smart, Dad. She knows you'd come here. She obviously doesn't want to discuss this yet."

"Next time she calls, try and get her to talk with me."

"Okay."

I left Howard Jones Field and returned home. It was after seve
n w
hen I got there. The first thing I did was check our home phone for messages again. There were three. One was from Secada asking me to call her. One was from Jeb Callaway--same message. The last one was from Alexa.

"Shane, it's me." Her voice sounded guarded. "Listen, I know you want to talk, but I need some time to myself right now. Don't chase after me. Don't make any demands. I'm in a place where I can think. I need to find out who I am and who I'm going to be. I love you, darling. Hang on and say a prayer for us."

Chapter
29
.

I SAT IN THE LIVING ROOM MAKING MORE ENTRIES INTO MY journal. I remembered Alexa striding into Cal's office, laying that writ of mandamus on Lieutenant Sheppard, telling him she'd drop
-
kick him out a window if he gave her any trouble. It was magnificent, just like the old days. But just when I thought she was back, she ran off, refusing to talk to me. Preferring to be alone.

I finally finished writing and closed the journal, then turned off the lights and lay on the sofa listening to the distant surf thunder two blocks away. The marine layer must have been rolling in because I heard the long, mournful wail of a foghorn. My thoughts turned inward.

I've never taken good fortune for granted. From an early age, my life as an orphan was a series of fistfights, manipulations, and lies. Like a wolf hovering at the edge of a campfire, I was always waiting for any sign of weakness so I could sweep in and take advantage. Cynicism was my armor, violence a reaction to loneliness, sex a physical release performed mostly with strangers. In all of this, I was only trying to survive.

After I met Alexa and Chooch, I let my guard down. I soon learned that I needed different things to survive. Respect, redemption, and love. I found myself on a new eye-opening path where good deeds were performed for no selfish reason. And finally, in the end, I developed the ability to become vulnerable to others. The next thing that happened was I began to accept love, and then even take it for granted. I never expected to experience the old emptiness, or deal again with the dark creatures that once crawled on the floor of my mind.

But now I was back where I started. All of it courtesy of one sixteen-gram hollow point round that scrambled Alexa's brain, causing a chain reaction that ended up changing everything.

I closed my eyes and wished that I could escape from all of this. Then, mercifully, I fell asleep.

The ringing of the telephone jolted me awake. I scrambled up off the sofa and snatched the receiver out of its cradle.

"Yes?" I was hoping for Alexa, but got Secada instead.

"Sorry it's so late," she said.

"What time is it?"

"Midnight."

"What's up?"

"Somebody got to Tru Hickman right after chow tonight. It happened in the cafeteria. Shanked. I just got a call from the prison hospital because my name's in his letter file. He's in ICU. It's critical."

"Who did him?"

"Gang-bangers from his car."

"Fuck!" I shouted at the walls. We'd been too slow, too predictable.

"I'm going up there now," Scout said.

"Okay. Me, too."

"Want me to pick you up?"

"Where are you?"

"Just leaving downtown. No traffic at this hour. I can be at your place in twenty."

She made it in eighteen. I was waiting out front and jumped into her green Suburban, and we roared out.

It was past one by the time we hit California 1-99 to Bakers
-
field. Big, empty, sixteen-wheel produce trucks churned relentlessly up the Grapevine, grinding through their gears heading over the San Gabriel Mountains into the Central Valley. As Secada drove she filled me in on a few things she'd learned while I'd been in my supervisor review and chasing after Alexa.

"I ran through Mike Church's background this afternoon looking for recent deaths. His father, Juan Iglesia, died in his shower eighteen months ago. There'd been bad blood between them since Mike got jumped into the Vanowen Street Locos at age fifteen. It got worse when he changed his name to Church. After Juan's death, Mike inherited the old man's auto body shop and tow service."

I looked over at her. "You sure Church didn't kill him?"

"I'm having the investigators' report and the M
. E
.'s statement faxed over to us. According to the coroner's assistant I talked to over at North Mission Road, it was a pinpoint injury. A heavy blow, but only a few centimeters in diameter. His skull was hit with such force it exploded some blood vessels inside his head. A single, massive stroke ensued."

"Do they know what caused the head trauma?"

"They think he just slipped in his shower and went down, hitting the faucet handle. At least, that's what the primary and the M
. E
. wrote. Death by accidental causes."

"But as a result, Church inherits his father's tow service and bus company," I mused. "I'm not going for it."

"Apparently, Juan Iglesia was 'El Corazon Oro,' " she said. "A friend with a heart of gold. I checked around. People loved this old man. He was the exact opposite of his deadbeat son. He started that little bus company and ran it as a nonprofit because he wanted to help the elderly and disabled. Kind of his way of giving back to America."

We rode in silence for a minute and then I said, "Okay, so what's the story on the Transit Authority Police Department then? Whose idea was that?"

"Probably Mike's. He inherited this little bus company with only one van that his father originally obtained by trading three broken motorcycles. Mike also inherited Iglesia Auto Body, which he promptly renamed the Church of Destruction. Then in September of last year the bus company bought four new Metro Coach fifty-seven passenger buses--big ones. A month later they form a transit police department and buy all kinds of topflight security to go inside the buses--elaborate, infrared cameras and state-of-the-art satellite GPS units to locate a bus if it's hijacked. Except, who's gonna hijack a bunch of disabled senior citizens?"

I looked over at her. "You've been busy. That's a lot of good info."

"Yeah, looks like a lot. But if you want the real truth, I was relieved of duty. I'm still getting paid, but Sasso put me on the rack. Apparently my undercarriage is getting checked for wet spots. Her words, not mine. That left me with an afternoon to kill. Most of this stuff I got off the NVNTA Web site."