City of Saviors, page 6
My eyes returned to the computer screen. “So: Eugene Washington’s offenses. A few DUIs between 1981 and 1985. An assault in ’87. Another assault in ’92 . . . Two citations from the city about the house.”
“When?” Colin asked.
“Back in 2010 and then this past January.”
“So he was an angry drunk who wouldn’t throw shit away?” Colin asked.
“And a veteran. Don’t forget that.” I continued to click around the World Wide Web to learn more about my victim. “A self-employed carpenter . . . He’s owned that house on Victoria since ’82.”
Results also included a brief mention in the May 2012 issue of Black Vets magazine; and a “New Member” announcement in the August 2011 electronic bulletin of Blessed Mission Ministries.
“He got the Holy Ghost,” Colin said.
“And gave up the spirits,” I added.
“You think Miss Bernice is gonna show up tomorrow?”
“Nope.” A few taps on the keyboard and Bernice Parrish’s DMV picture popped up on the screen. Full-drag makeup and finger waves like RuPaul. Smoky eyes and pouty lips like Tyra Banks.
“A few parking tickets,” I said. “Possession of drug paraphernalia fifteen years ago, and . . . interesting.” Detective Google told me that Bernice Parrish owed the State of California so much money that they’d tried to publicly shame her as punishment—she was now listed as a deadbeat on their tax cheats Web site. And since 2012, Who Do Yo Hair had been sued six times in civil court.
“Did you ask her why she was dating a man like Eugene?” Colin asked.
I shook my head. “A woman in deep debt will overlook a house of trash if she needs to. Women overlook a whole lot of things. Hell: I did.” Then, I typed in “Joseph Rice.”
The screen filled with a list of offenses longer than Infinite Jest.
Colin tsk-tsked. “Joe problems, Joe problems, Joe problems.”
From fraud and armed robbery to trespassing and indecent exposure, Joseph Rice broke the law as though breaking every one of them resulted in a new set of tires and 30 percent cash back.
“Born in ’55?” Colin marveled. “Wow. He’s a lot older than he looks.”
“Black don’t crack,” I said. “I’m actually 106 years old.”
“What up, C.T.?” Vince O’Shea, red-faced, pockmarked, and shaped like a tuba, grinned at me as he steered a handcuffed cholo toward the interview rooms.
“You all right, Taggert?” O’Shea’s partner asked. Dennis Whitaker resembled cotton candy wearing a bow tie. To me, he asked, “Run into something good today, Norton?”
“If she did,” O’Shea said, “bet they’ll make her mayor.”
Both men laughed.
I flipped them double birds, then said, “Why don’t you both go catch a bus in the face?”
Whitaker grabbed his crotch and squeezed.
“Call me when you find it,” I said, “cuz sources say you’re no bigger than a jumbo Tampax.”
Both men reddened. The cholo and Colin snickered.
“I’ve seen the pictures,” I said, twisting the knife in. “Should I share them?”
Whitaker muttered something—a curse or a plea.
The cholo said, “You got a little pecker, ese?”
O’Shea said, “I call bullshit.”
I plucked my phone from the desk.
He held up his hands. “Don’t run me over, Sarge.” He cackled, then ambled back to his messy desk.
Colin gnawed his bottom lip, then said, “They’re assholes.”
“And they were assholes last September, too,” I said. “The accident is just giving them more material to work with. They’ve never liked me, Taggert. It’s cuz of my boobs and the way I always talk back to the movie screen.” I grinned, then shouted, “Gurl, don’t go in that room!”
He didn’t speak or smile.
“Does it look like I’m stressing over them?” I asked. “What? You embarrassed to be my partner now?”
His blue eyes darkened as he glared at me. “Hell, no.”
“Then, relax before you pop a blood vessel.” In truth, my skin smoldered with anger. “C.T.” didn’t mean “Colin Taggert.” It meant “Crash Test.” Whatever. Crashing the RAV4 into that Park Services truck netted me a dead villain, a $300 Trader Joe’s gift card from the NAACP, a promotion, and a Medal of Valor.
Colin yawned and stretched. “So, what now?”
“We send Eugene’s will over to the lawyer who prepared it,” I said. “Then, we wait for the autopsy and forensic results to see if he was shot or intentionally poisoned. And we’ll bring in Bernice and Joe for a lengthier chat. Call the Oswald guy since he’s getting the house.”
Colin said, “Great,” then rolled in his chair back to his desk.
I sat back and surveyed the squad room.
Luke was still out killing roaches.
O’Shea and Whitaker were huddled over O’Shea’s desk, a shrine to Big Macs and Monster Energy drinks.
Quiet for a moment.
Until Colin hit the voice-mail button on his phone. A man’s voice boomed from the speaker. “This is Detective Andreoff in the Internal Affairs—” Colin grabbed the receiver. He listened to the message with his eyes closed, then dropped the handset back into the cradle.
“Why is Andy calling you?” I asked. “He want you to snitch on somebody?”
“Who knows?” He blushed, then his hard eyes settled on the computer screen.
I watched him in silence, then asked, “I know it’s ancient history now, but we never really talked about . . . Do you believe my decision at the park . . . ?”
He canted his head. “You had no choice. Either you would’ve had to let Zach Fletcher take you to that spot on the trail where he left Chanita and Allayna, hoping he didn’t take your gun away, hoping he didn’t kill you; or end that shit in the RAV4 and not take a chance, hoping that God would save you in the end. Killing Zach Fletcher via windshield saved Taylor, Trina, and who knows how many girls. I would’ve done the same thing, Lou.” His face softened. “You’re right—O’Shea and Whitaker are bastards who just want to poke at nonexistent shit. Yesterday, today, until the end of time. Jealous jerks who think . . .” He forced a smile to his lips. “Screw what they think, right?” His smile wavered.
But then again . . . maybe I was seeing things.
8
SEEING THINGS.
Like dead people.
Zach Fletcher. Napoleon Crase. My sister Victoria.
On the street. In the corner of a room. In the backseat of my car.
Something, something brain structure, neurobiology blah blah blah according to my neurologist.
Quite common, my psychotherapist had explained. Not psychosis. Just your mind’s way of coping with loss.
At Southwest Division, loss happened every day—outside this old building, certainly, but also in every squad and break room. Loss smelled like lilies, cigarettes, and assorted fresh fruit, like the basket now in my arms. The Edible Arrangements gift came courtesy of Angie Darson, who had suffered greatly at the hands of her husband Cyrus and Max Crase. Lips trembling, she said now, “Like it or not, you and me? We’re linked forever by men who took away people we loved.”
Like me, Angie nightmared every night.
Unlike me, Angie had borne two daughters, Macie and Monique, with a monster. She’d loved Cyrus, had shared his bed and taken his name without ever knowing that he’d joined Max Crase in the rape and murder of my sister. It wasn’t long ago that Crase had strangled Monique and left her hanging in a closet of his father’s condominium before he finally shot and killed both Macie and Napoleon, Max Crase’s father—and owner of the liquor store that had also been the grave for my sister’s bones. That afternoon, he had also turned his gun on me, but my fist in his face stopped him from being great. Still, as Max Crase’s murder trial came closer to its start, shame, fear, guilt, and anxiety kept Angie from moving forward in her life.
I feared she would succumb to the pain. That she’d smoke herself to death if she didn’t use a gun or pills first. Twenty pounds lighter, and hair almost completely gray, she allowed her grief to moor her, to make her heavy.
“I’m just worried about you, Ang.”
“I’m worried about you, too.” She looked past me to the woebegone families, the handcuffed thugs, and the weary-faced rookies all sprinkled around the lobby. “This place—it ain’t healthy.”
I chuckled, even though my gut twisted. “Can’t disagree.”
“What’s the point?” she asked.
Nothing I did prevented a damned thing. For ten years now, I had picked up the pieces after that Very Bad Thing. Cleaned crazy up. Prayed that the monster I caught would pay the price before I turned to another monster who’d done a Very Bad Thing. Clean. Pray. Clean. Pray. So many monsters.
I carried Angie’s fruit bouquet down the corridor of the fallen en route to my desk. On the walls were pictures of Southwest Division officers slain while on duty. Aiden Colletti, an asshole who had come up the ranks of the ex-chief Daryl Gates’s LAPD—Crips had smoked him during a raid at a crack house. Patrick Nicholson, another dinosaur who’d rather eat glass soaked in lye than work beside blacks and women in the force. Tom Larson, who had championed community policing and talking to people instead of shooting them.
For weeks, I’d avoided this route—its dark energy made my knees quiver.
How long will I last? Avenging the dead, finding the monster, and receiving cupcakes, fruit, discounts on oil changes, and free dry-cleaning from the ones left behind.
Back in March, I could’ve been on this wall, easy. And there would’ve been cops standing where I now stood, thinking about what an asshole I’d been before my demise, griping about the commendations I’d received but didn’t deserve. How I obviously wanted to die because of my divorce or because I just couldn’t cut it anymore with the boys.
While cops were six times more likely to commit suicide than Joe Public, black women had the lowest suicide rates of all races and gender. So, hell no: I wasn’t ready to leave this earth yet. I still needed to see the first black woman president run the world from the Oval Office. After that, though? Y’all could do what you want. Check, please.
* * *
She gave you fruit again?” Colin complained.
“You ain’t gotta eat it,” I said. “In fact . . .” I sat the basket on my desk, searched the cellophane wrapper, then gasped. “Your name’s not even on it.”
Colin winked at me as his cell phone chirped. He viewed the number, smiled, then answered. “Hey you.”
Luke entered the bullpen, devouring a wet plate of something that smelled like onions and musty socks. “That dessert?” he asked, nodding at my fruit.
I grimaced. “What the heck are you eating?”
“You insultin’ my heritage?” He shoved the last bits of his heritage into his mouth.
Colin, eyes closed, was still on the phone—but he now held it away from his ear. His plum-colored face meant that the chick on the phone was giving him the blues. “Libby,” he said, rubbing his eyes, “I’m hanging up now. I’m . . .” He stuffed the phone into his shirt pocket. “Is it me or does every woman in LA have a serious mental problem?”
“You meet a loon on one date,” I said, “you’ve met a loon. You meet loons on every date . . . Maybe you’re the asshole. Luke, where’s Mr. Kim? We need to get started.”
Pepe’s chair was empty—the fan twisting on his credenza cooled no one. Packs of Starburst chews and Camels sat on his desk. He never went anywhere without either.
“Another phone call with them people,” Luke said between bites.
Many rank and file considered cops in the Internal Affairs Bureau to be out-of-touch, pearl-clutching snitches. They dinged you for breaking rules, dinged you for taking shortcuts, and suspended you for wielding your baton and badge too wildly. I’d been called before the IAB to answer for Max Crase’s nose (“Yes, sir, I broke it”), Eli Moss’s nose (“Yes, sir, I broke it”), and Zach Fletcher’s . . . body (“Yes, ma’am, I . . . broke it”). With a pamphlet addressing proper use of force in hand, I was then sent back to my desk to do better.
Pepe didn’t care—he had worked homicide for three years now. The son of a Korean grocer and a Mexican seamstress, he had been the only one of us who’d made his parents proud. But once he came out to them, his parents joined the support group founded by my mother, Colin’s father, and Brooks’s parents—parents who were profoundly disappointed in their kids’ choices. I couldn’t pass the state bar and chose to be a cop instead. Colin had cheated on the daughter of Colorado Springs’s chief of police while on duty. Brooks had chosen to carve up the dead instead of carving out a successful career as a surgeon. But the Kims’ membership to this club of Profound Disappointment would be short-lived if Pepe landed a spot in the IAB. Better suits. Nicer offices. More visibility.
“We’ll wait five more minutes,” I said, “but then, we need to meet. We got work to do.”
While waiting, I nibbled pineapple wedges and checked e-mail: Police Foundation (give), Police Chief Beck’s Fund (give). Pressure had lodged over the ridge of my forehead, and I had taken enough Advil for at least two more hours. Still . . .
I tossed casual glances around the squad room—no one was looking at me. I opened my bottom drawer and pawed around my bag, finding the Altoids tin that held mints and ibuprofen caplets. You need it. My hands shook as I touched a pill, hesitated—I can wait—then slipped a mint into my mouth instead.
“You okay?”
I startled and closed the Altoids tin with a pop.
Pepe, over at his desk, was staring at me. In his tailored suit and conservative haircut, he looked like he already belonged to the IAB.
“Yep. I’m good.” The mint slowly dissolved in my mouth. I grabbed my bottled water near the computer monitor and took a gulp. “We’re meeting now.”
“I’ll only be a minute.” Pepe said. “You sure you’re okay?”
I flicked my hand. “All good. Go get your nicotine fix.” I picked up Angie Darson’s basket. “I’ll bring refreshments.”
He said, “Okay,” grabbed the candy and Camels, then hurried back to the exit.
After Pepe’s smoke and fruit chews break, he joined Colin, Luke, and me in conference room Freedom.
Despite its new moniker, fresh coats of cerulean blue paint, and updated audiovisual capabilities, the room still reeked of mildewed carpet and grilled onions—and with the boxes of evidence from Washington’s house sitting around, it now also stank of cat pee and roach dust. A few roaches from those boxes ran across the walls and table—but Luke smashed and sprayed them before they could mate with our native population. Pictures of the house and victim that we had taken before that afternoon had been tacked into the cork wall. At least the air conditioner worked, although it made the smells sharper. One day, I’d work in a place that smelled of vanilla, lavender, and Weight Watchers entrees.
I pulled skewers of strawberries and pineapple from the fruit basket (the best-smelling thing for miles), then connected my laptop to the cables of the sixty-inch television monitor. “The Washington house is secure, right?”
Pepe nodded. “Two uniforms will be rotating on, rotating off until you give me the word.”
Luke’s eyes widened with panic. “We don’t have to go back, right?”
I opened my laptop. “If we gotta, we gotta. Especially since those gold coins are in there somewhere.”
“We did see a car right as we were leaving,” Pepe said. “A silver Chrysler 300 moving real slow. I ran the plates.”
Colin pulled off a cantaloupe skewer. “Lemme guess: Joseph Rice.”
Pepe popped a lemon Starburst into his mouth. “Yep. That’s Bernice’s special friend, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Did he stop?”
“Nope.”
“Was she in the car?”
“Couldn’t tell,” Luke said. “Tinted windows.” He opened his notebook. “I’ve been a cop for fifteen years, and I ain’t never seen no house like that. I’m still killin’ roaches in my car.”
Colin popped open a can of Diet Coke. “When I get home tonight, I’m gonna clean the hell out of my apartment.”
I walked over to the whiteboard and wrote TO DO. Item number one: WARRANTS FOR MED RECORDS. “Pepe, could you handle that?” Then, I made another heading on the whiteboard: WHODUNIT? “So who could’ve killed our vic? And remember: the locks weren’t forced, and the windows weren’t broken. Eugene Washington probably opened the door and invited his murderer in for a forty ounce and a game of checkers.”
“Ain’t poisoning a girl thing?” Colin asked.
“Typically.” I wrote BERNICE as my first suspect.
“Put down her real boyfriend,” Luke added. “He coulda used that gun.”
JOE RICE went second.
Pepe tossed me two strawberry Starburst. “Mr. Washington got any family?”
I tapped Bernice’s name, then opened the fruit chew. “Not according to her. Let’s look at the will again.”
As Colin read aloud, I wrote more names beneath Bernice’s. OSWALD LITTLE . . . ISAAC UNDERWOOD . . . ASSOCIATION OF BLACK VETERANS . . .
I underlined the second name on the list. “Oswald Little is getting almost everything valuable—the house and the car. The vets get the medals. This guy Isaac gets the vinyl records. And Bernice, the gold.”
“Who are Oswald Little and Isaac Underwood?” Pepe asked.
“We need to find out.” I made a note to contact both men. “Oh. Insurance policy—we’re supposed to check.”
We searched the boxes but found no forms.
“Bernice says he had an old policy and was getting another,” I said. “Let’s keep it in the front of our minds from here on out.”
“All those people on the board,” Luke said, “who’d want him dead quickest?”
My marker tapped BERNICE, then slid to OSWALD LITTLE. “Sell the house, make half a million.”
“I think Bernice is our best bet,” Colin said. “Especially with shifty-ass Joe. And didn’t you say she’s been sued, like, fifty times since yesterday?”
