Текст книги "The Disposables"

Автор книги: David Putnam

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Being an active member of the BMFs was like being in a street gang but only more organized. Robby Wicks was the leader, the brain of the operation who thought way out ahead of everyone else. For instance, if you were on the prowl poaching in LAPD’s area, in their low-income public housing projects, which was strictly forbidden by the sheriff’s executive staff because, “LAPD can patrol their own shitholes,” and the “shit went south,” Robby had a remedy already in place.

If while in the projects, by an unlucky circumstance you became separated from your partner before you had time to confer on your fabricated probable cause, Robby’s rule was simple. When asked, “why the hell were you in the projects?” you’d consider the date. On odd days you followed a blue Chevy with gang members into the projects, and on even days it was a green Ford. Once inside, something else diverted your attention. Your partner would say the same.

It wasn’t really Tuesday, and I really didn’t need to take a piss. The words were another code for the BMFs. It meant something critical had just come up. Either out in the field with an informant, in an interview with a crook, or while relating an incident to a boss, an incident with fabricated evidence that wasn’t coming out right once exposed to the light of day. The words were an absolute code red. Cease and desist until another meeting could be reconvened to straighten it out. I was no longer a member of the elite squad and had no reason to believe Mack would honor it.

I added, “Seriously, no bullshit, you need to hear this.”

Mack didn’t look to the right up at the camera where his captain was watching from the other room. Mack fought the urge, and I gave him a lot of credit for it. He didn’t know what to do.

The decision was taken out of his hands. The door opened and Homicide came in, a man and woman I had never seen before. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had nine thousand deputies. I had been out of circulation for three years. A lot could happen to an agency that size in three years: transfers, promotions, retirements, terminations.

The woman, a thin, bottle redhead, dressed in a nice black pantsuit that reeked of nicotine, said to Mack, “Thanks, Detective, we can take it from here.” She shot him a put-on smile that really meant she was beyond angry for polluting her ripened interrogation subject and it would be addressed later.

Mack stared into my eyes as he got up and left.

The woman had the lead. She sat down with a notebook, held out a red box of Marlboros. “Cigarette?” It was strictly forbidden to smoke in a county building. This was another interrogation ploy, an infraction violation, that said, “See, I’m like you, I break the law.” A minor violation in comparison, but it does work. And when you were talking about a case as large and as important as this one, you tried everything.

I stared at her and didn’t say anything. She kept the phony smile, pulled a cigarette out of the box with her subdued red lipstick lips, but didn’t light it. “So,” she said, her eyes slightly pinned as if she had lit the cigarette and the smoke now wafted up, “I understand you’ve waived your rights.”

I weighed my options: talk to this woman and make a deal or wait to see if Mack had the guts to talk to me later.

When I didn’t immediately say anything, she said to her partner, a bleary-eyed red-faced man in an immaculate navy-blue suit, “John, Mr. Johnson looks uncomfortable. I think we can take the cuffs off, don’t you?”

Her partner got up to take off the cuffs.

“Bruno, you mind if I call you Bruno? My name is Nancy Thorne, and I think you know why I’m here.”

I rubbed my wrists and made my choice. “I would like to talk to an attorney.”

There was no rush in making a deal. I could always do that later.

The sheriff long ago learned to take special care of sensational prisoners. You didn’t put them in general population where another inmate with a yen for fame, a wannabe who had the desire to make a name for himself, could put a shiv between your celebrity’s ribs. There was a place in the jail called Administrative Segregation. The inmates wore green jumpsuits instead of standard blues and were labeled “Keep Aways, Escort Only.” I wasn’t put in Ad Seg because classification labeled me based on my alleged crimes. They’d booked me for everything, the torch murders, the kidnapping, and the train robberies. They threw all the charges up against the wall to see what would stick. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done any different under the circumstances. Homicide Detective Thorne and her crew had forty-eight hours to file the charges.

The jail considered me a suicide risk. I was put on the third-floor hospital in a single room with a fifteen-minute observation. This meant a deputy came by every fifteen minutes and looked in the little square window in the hard steel door to confirm I was still breathing and log that fact on the chart.

Maybe I should’ve been suicidal, but this whole thing was too pat and obviously set up on the fly. I knew, if given the chance, there was an outside possibility I could tear it down. What didn’t make sense was that Robby was smarter than all this. He had to know his house of cards would take a nosedive.

I waited for hours, counting the time off in fifteen-minute increments each time I saw the on-duty deputy put his face in the window of the door. I paced the small room and tried to stay awake by counting how many looky-loos came to my window, besides the on-duty deputy. The others wanted in to see the serial killer who was lighting people on fire, the man splashed across the TV and Los Angeles Times. Jail personnel, hospital staff, trustees, all came and looked in the zoo window. Gradually, the adrenaline bled off. Four hours passed. I laid down on the bed, curled up, fought sleep, prayed that the door would open, and Mack would be there. Ironically, I now depended upon him to save me.

My eyes grew heavy. The light went off and then strobed every fifteen minutes in my semidream state.

When I woke, I’d lost track of the flashes and didn’t know what time it was, whether it was day or night outside in the real world. I went to the window and waited ten minutes before the deputy came by, looked, and then marked the paper. I had to yell to be heard through the door. “What time is it?”

He didn’t answer and gave me the bird before he moved on. I waited. Two inmate trustees in blues pushed a noisy food cart down the hall as two others picked up empty trays. Breakfast. I’d slept longer than I thought. When I was a brand-new deputy, I only worked the hospital a couple of times on overtime and didn’t remember when chow was fed in the morning. I thought it was five o’clock to facilitate preparing the inmates for court. I went back to pacing. Dust motes hung in the air. I couldn’t help remembering that I had read somewhere most dust was particles of skin humans shed every day of their lives.

The activity in the hall increased, then abruptly dropped off all together while everyone ate. The little horizontal slot with a locked door under the window opened and a trustee put a hot tray on the ledge. My breakfast stayed right there on the ledge well past noon and was finally replaced with a brown-bag lunch. I didn’t eat that either, though I knew what was in it: a white bread American cheese sandwich, a bag of chips, a mushy apple, and a dried-out hard chocolate chip cookie.

Mack didn’t come until after dinner.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Mack didn’t look in the window, the key in the door rattled the lock, the door opened, and he stepped in. His face turned red and he clenched his fists. “I’m putting my ass on the line. This better not be bullshit.” He had dark half circles under his bloodshot eyes, and his hair was mussed. It looked as if he hadn’t slept. He wore denim pants, a thick brown belt, a Rolling Stones t-shirt, the one with the large tongue on the front, partially covered by a long-sleeve, tan corduroy shirt stretched tight at the shoulders and biceps. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, the blond hair hardly visible on his lantern jaw.

I sat up on the bed and rubbed my face and looked out the open door at freedom, a sterile institution-beige hallway. “Maybe you should close the door and lower your voice.”

He hesitated.

I may have tried to take control of the meeting too quickly. He stomped over to the door and slammed it. I heard the solid steel door lock automatically. Deputy Mack was prone to those kinds of mistakes.

“You going to start talking or am I going to walk out?”

“The door’s locked.”

His face flushed red.

I held up my hands, “Whoa. I’m sorry, really. Don’t get mad. I’m going to make you a star.”

“Like hell you are. You got nothin’. I don’t even know what I’m doin here.”

“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here at all. You know there’s something terribly wrong with what’s going on. More so than normal, I mean.”

He calmed down, looked over his shoulder with a quick glance, and backed up to sit in a hard plastic chair.

“I know you have no reason to believe me. I didn’t burn those people and I didn’t shoot Crazy Ned Bressler.”

He opened his mouth to speak. I cut him off. “I know who burned those people. That’s why you’re here. You know it’s the truth.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“You know why?”

He stared, thinking it over, not rising to the bait.

I leaned forward, my hands on the edge of the bed, “Why don’t you tell me why I’m telling you.”

His light-blue eyes were almost gray. He waited a long time, his jaw muscle knitting. Finally, he looked away as if making a confession. “I grew up in south Texas. My daddy was a lawman and so was my grandpap. I wanted to get away from being Big John Mack’s little boy and make my own way.”

I didn’t know what this had to do with anything, but I had the time.

“I moved out here and joined the best law enforcement organization in the world. Everything was great. I loved my job. I moved up fast, made it to the shit-hot Violent Crimes Team. At first, this job—there was nothing better. It was everything I wanted and imagined. Until about two years ago.”

I knew what he was talking about. I’d been there.

He paused, so I finished it for him. “Until your leader changed emotionally.”

He looked back at me. “I called back to Texas and talked to my people. You know what my daddy said? He said, an Apache will ride his horse right into the ground until it dies. Then he’ll eat it. Robby Wicks is an Apache.”

Deputy Mack was a lot smarter than I gave him credit for.

He said, “So, asshole, if you got something to tell me you better get after it.”

“I’ll tell you on two conditions.”

“You don’t get any conditions. Look around you, you’re in a world of shit right now.”

“Think about this,” I said, “if what I tell you is true—and you know there is better than even odds that it is or you wouldn’t be sitting here—this world of shit of mine, most of it anyway, will disappear. I’m telling you, you’re going to be a star.”

“Knock that star shit off. All I want is to rub Robby Wicks’s nose in it.”

“And all I want is simple. I want to go with you.” I thought he would laugh or yell, but he just looked at me as if he half expected something like this. Something more was going on. I needed to be out in the open to get at it. “And I want a face-to-face with my girl and my dad.”

“Gimme the name. Tell me who you think is really burning the people.”

This time I waited. If I told him, then he could go out on his own and find him. He wouldn’t need me anymore. This was the only ace I had, and he knew it. I’d have to start trusting him sometime. Dad always said there was some good in everyone. I wanted in the worst way to believe that about Mack. “It’s Ruben the Cuban.”

Mack stood up, walked to the door, and knocked on it.

“Do we have a deal?”

He didn’t turn around or answer.

“Wait. I know Ruben the Cuban. I can find him fast.”

Mack said nothing.

The door rattled as the key went in the lock. My only chance was about to walk out the door never to return.

“Mack?”

The door opened. He took a step out.

“Mack?”

Mack stopped, but didn’t turn around.

I said in a lower tone, “Ruben the Cuban used to work for Q-Ball—Quentin Bridges—and he used to frequent the burned-out apartment building on El Segundo where he sold rock for Q.”

It was everything I had. I threw it out there to show Mack, to prove I was straight up and telling the truth.

The hard steel door swung closed and locked.

I sat on the edge of the bed, knowing I had played it wrong. Mack wasn’t like me. He had the information now. He didn’t need me. He’d run with it. My stomach growled. My muscles relaxed. I hadn’t realized I’d been so tense. I stared at the door, at the little window until my eyes burned from not blinking.

Keys in the lock jangled. I let out a long breath.

Mack came back in with the Asian deputy from the Violent Crimes Team, the guy Robby called Fong. They closed the door. In another time and another place, I might’ve thought they were there for a different reason, a little get-even time for their downed comrade. Fong went to the far wall, put his back to it, crossed his arms, his almond-shaped eyes all but invisible. He was built low to the ground with stout, broad shoulders and little fat, his gleaming black hair combed straight back.

Mack said, “You only want to go along so at the first opportunity you can make a break. You got nothing to lose.”

“You’re wrong. I’ll give you my word. And if you know anything about me, you know that it’s good.”

Fong smirked. “You’re a serial killer. We’re supposed to believe you?”

“That’s the dilemma, isn’t it? I’m not. You believe that I’m not or you wouldn’t be here contemplating taking me out of custody for a show-and-tell.” I gave them the words to make it easier for them, help with their excuse to do it. An investigator had the right, with approval of course, to take an inmate out of custody to do a show-and-tell. The inmate was to be kept under heavy guard, handcuffed and waist-chained, and was never to leave the backseat of the undercover car. The inmate then pointed out a drug house, a crash pad, where suspects were hiding or where the bodies were buried.

They looked at each other. All this had been planned beforehand or Fong wouldn’t have been out in the hall waiting. When Mack had gone out, they had discussed it again, made their decision to do it. They had to be scared of losing their jobs, going to jail, and worse. They were scared of the Great Robby Wicks.

They needed a little added nudge. “Q-Ball right now is in an apartment on 124th Street right off of Wilmington in a cul-de-sac.” I raised my right hand, “I swear to you.” Then I remembered how Q had made the illegal U-turn in front of the Bimbo Bread truck on Long Beach Boulevard. He could be at Killer King Hospital. I also remembered about Tommy Bascombe, how he clung to me, how his head came up like a little prairie dog with the sound of the crash. How Tommy gobbled down the food at Lucy’s and was now either in foster care, or worse, back with Dora. I pushed that thought back. One small step at a time.

“Here’s the deal,” Mack said. “I don’t trust you. Not for one second. That’s why I brought Fong in. He’s going to walk five paces behind with a gun in his pocket. He won’t be involved in anything we do other than watching you. That’s his entire focus. If you so much as take a hurried step to get out of the way of a bus that’s about to hit you, he will shoot you in the back. You understand?”

“No, problem. I told you I gave you my word. My word’s good as gold. You can ask Robby.” I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Mack went and knocked on the steel door to call the jail deputy, then turned back and said, “You’re like all the rest of those who have a higher opinion of the Great Robby Wicks. If you only knew. He always refers to you as his ‘skillet.’ He’d say, ‘me and my skillet we did this’ or ‘you should’ve seen the skillet’s eyes when I gunned him, shot his black ass off’ and …”

The door opened, interrupting Mack. His words had done a number on me, sliced right through me, slashed open a gaping wound. Earlier Robby had hurt me with his words but I had somehow halfway justified it. Sure, I was angry, but I’d given him just cause. I’d crossed the line deep into criminal territory and allowed some of my own guilt to mask and accept his behavior. Mack’s description of my friend somehow illuminated a truth that had always been there since I’d known Robby, like a bubble about to burst.

The deputy assigned to the hospital came in dragging chains. Policy for a show-and-tell was chains. No arguing this point.

Chapter Forty

The deputy locked the chain around my waist, laced the cuffs through, and then handcuffed my hands in a permanent position just above my hips. Next, he shackled my legs together at the ankles with enough slack for three-quarter’s of a step. With each step, the sound and weight made me think of a chain gang.

Outside my room, all the doors were closed and the hall empty. Mack had wanted to keep the number of witnesses and involved parties to a minimum. A futile effort if the caper went south. As Robby used to say, “It is what it is.”

The deputy stayed ahead of us and called the elevator, the sound of my chains the only noise in the hall, that and my heavy breathing.

The elevator door opened. I flashed on a memory from when I used to work the jail. Back when I was a new guy, “a cherry,” I took my lunch break with a veteran who had all of six months at Men’s Central Jail. We called for the elevator. When the doors opened, we saw an inmate all by himself, no shirt just jail-blue pants, handcuffed to the hand rail, his back to the wall, his butt on the floor. Beat to a bloody pulp, his face so swollen his features all blurred into mush. The veteran jail deputy casually reached over and pushed the elevator button. “Sorry,” he said, “wrong floor.” The doors closed and the in mate went on down. I stood as the veteran deputy turned to me, said, “Maybe it’d be better if we took the stairs.” I never did find out the story of what happened that day, but I heard rumors that on occasion, deputies took the more obstreperous inmates for a “Disney ride, an E ticket,” on the elevators to conduct an “attitude adjustment.”

The doors closed. Mack and Fong stared straight ahead. The odor in the car no different from in the jail cells, a reek that permeated every inch of every jail; human sweat, mixed with spit, feces, and blood. The door opened to the basement, the odor replaced by the aroma of chicken soup. A welcome change emanating from the kitchen.

“Hey, the deal was I got to see my girl.”

Fong grabbed my waist chain and shoved. He was strong. We moved into the main isle of the kitchen. At any one time, the sheriff had twenty-five thousand, presentenced inmates in custody, a good chunk of the residents in Men’s Central Jail, MCJ. To the left were rows of large cauldrons of bubbling stew, large enough to be a fat man’s Jacuzzi. The inmates in blues all stopped what they were doing to watch as we ambled through. No unauthorized personnel were allowed in the kitchen. A general employee, a cook specialist II, slapped the back of the head of an inmate who stirred a cauldron of stew with a large oarlike boat paddle, snapping him to attention. The cook reached into the cauldron with two fingers and pulled out what looked like a large condom. When he shook it out, it was a latex glove mottled white and gray from the heat.

We moved on down the aisle as fast as the shackles allowed and came to a large opening. Fresh, cold night air hit my face. We turned a corner to a loading dock where a Violent Crime’s undercover car was backed in.

On the dock stood a female uniformed deputy and my girl.

My Marie.

My heart soared. I hobbled faster. She broke away from her keeper. She was dressed in jail blues that hid her figure. Her hair was undone and shot out in different directions. Tears streaked her face, her eyes bloodshot from crying. We met in between. I couldn’t hug her, my hands were restricted to my hips. She hugged and kissed me, her body hot, hot enough to scorch. I clung to her hips. I nuzzled her neck. Drank her in.

I said, “I’m sorry, babe. I’m so sorry. I truly don’t know how they got on to us. It must’ve been me. They must’ve followed me.”

“Hush, are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Bruno, it’s not as bad as you said it was, really, it’s not.”

A large ball rose up in my throat, made it difficult to talk. “You’re a bad liar. Thank you for trying.”

“The kids, Bruno. The poor kids. Alonzo. I can’t even imagine—”

“Ssh. Kiss me.”

She did long and deep.

We didn’t have much time. Any second Mack was going to call time. He had already gone out of his way. And I intended to thank him later for it. Even though he’d done it for a reason. He wanted it more difficult for me to renege on our deal. He didn’t know me and I couldn’t blame him.

“Don’t you worry,” I said when I came up for air. “I got something in the works. I’m going to get you out.”

Her shoulders started to shake. “Bruno, what did you do? What did you have to trade away? What makes you think these people will give us the slightest consideration for what we’ve done? They’ve got to be mad as hell. Especially about Wally Kim. Poor Mr. Kim.”

“You didn’t tell them anything? I mean, you invoked just like I told you, right?”

“Yes, I did just like you said. They didn’t get a thing from me. What did you do? Tell me.”

Mack said, “Come on, time’s up.”

I ignored him. “They want something only I can give them. I’m going to trade it for you and Dad.”

“No, you have a record. You’re on parole. They’ll go easier on me. Make a deal for yourself. I’m serious, Bruno. You do it or I’m going to be mad as hell. I won’t talk to you ever again.”

She made me smile. “Ssh, listen, there isn’t time. How’s Dad? Did he take it okay?”

She looked scared.

I tried to read her eyes. “What?”

She whispered. “Did they get your dad too?”

“What do you mean?”

“I never made it to the house. They zoomed up as I was walking down the street. I saw you in the car. They already had you.”

“You never got inside? Did you see the cops inside the house at all?”

“No. Do you think?”

My heart soared at the prospect. Were the cops that naïve to pick her up before she made it to where she was going? If they were so hot after the kids, they were fools for making the scoop when they did. “Robby just wanted to rub my nose in it by showing me he had you. He jumped the gun to make a point.”

“That means your dad and the—” She lowered her voice to faint whisper, “and the kids are still in the house and okay. Can that be true? Is that possible?”

“Then what are they holding you on? What’s going on?” I choked on the lump in my throat. “Dad’s okay. Dad made it out.” One of the heavy rocks lying on my chest just floated off.

Mack, behind me, tugged on the back part of my chain. “Come on, man, we been back here too long already.”

I leaned down and kissed Marie, my tongue overpowering hers. I wanted to consume all of her.

They pulled us apart, my body cooler from her absence. “I love you, Marie. Always remember I love you.”

“Please don’t say it that way.”

“Don’t you worry. You won’t be in long. I promise.”

Overcome with emotion, she couldn’t talk anymore. She wept and gulped at air. The female deputy put her in a wrist lock and tugged her along in the opposite direction. Mack gave up tugging on my chain and waited behind me until Marie was out of sight, then I let them move me to the car. I should’ve been ashamed at what I’d done to her. Instead I was furious. More furious than I ever remember being. Furious at Robby Wicks. He was the one who had done this. He was the one responsible. No matter what happened, I was going to make him pay.