City of War (13 page)

I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “Too many leaps.”

“Mr. Black, you ever put together jigsaw puzzles when you were a kid?”

“What’s your point?”

“Ninety percent of the pieces could be missing, but if you had the right ones, you’d still be able to recognize the Eiffel Tower.”

“That line usually close a reluctant witness?” I said with not-very-well-disguised sarcasm.

So Manarca handed me the second photograph he’d taken out of his pocket. It was a shot of a blue-jeaned knee, bent at an odd angle, and next to it was an empty flower basket. Well, not completely empty. A 9mm Beretta lay in the bottom.

“I suppose you’ve already got a ballistics match, or we wouldn’t be going through this charade?”

“Unequivocal,” said the detective.

Jake stood up. “Then I take it you’re finished with my client.”

I handed Manarca back his pictures. He took them and put both back in his pocket. “The good news is that as soon as the story breaks, the media’s gonna beat feet outta here and give you some peace.” Turning to Jake, he said, “If it’s all right with you, Mr. Praxis, I’ll have a statement typed up and sent to your office. Mr. Black can review it at his convenience and make any changes he feels necessary. Just get it back to me as soon as you can so I can close this out.”

Pantiagua was already heading toward the door.

“Sorry about Ms. York,” said Manarca. “Beautiful lady. I’m glad you pulled through.”

But I wasn’t finished. “So that’s it? No follow-through on Tino or Dante?”

Manarca gave me his best tired-cop look. “Even if what she told you was true, it was unrelated to her death. And since I don’t have a complaining witness, the kidnapping, or whatever it was, is history.”

He was right, and I knew it, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. As Manarca turned to leave, I said, “Humor me for a minute, Sergeant. Did Kiki Videz have any tattoos? Maybe one on his right arm?”

I thought I saw a flicker of something in Manarca’s eyes, then it was gone. “Funny thing. The ME said somebody took a machete to the body after the guy was dead—hacked both arms off at the elbow. They weren’t in the truck, so my guess is Los Tigres had a little show-and-tell with the troops to smarten up anybody else who might have a wild idea.”

I took a long look at the detective, who was suddenly perspiring. “Starting to look a lot more like a steaming turd than Paris, isn’t it, Sergeant?”

Manarca didn’t answer.

“Who claimed Dr. York’s body?”

“So far, no one.”

When the cops had gone, I said to Jake, “You think he’ll work it on the quiet?”

“Right. Because he’s got that big incentive clause in his contract.”

I looked out the window. There was a crane across the street swinging an I-beam into the frame of an unfinished building. I watched the two guys on the receiving end expertly get a rope around it and pull it in.

Suddenly, I felt very tired. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, it was dark, and Jake was gone. I heard the dinner cart in the hallway, then someone knocked on my door. “I’m not hungry,” I called out.

But the door pushed open anyway, and Mitchell Adams came in, wearing a Delta Airlines Windbreaker over his uniform. He looked old and very, very tired. “I read about you in the paper,” he said. “The girl? Was she the one in Walter’s picture?”

I nodded.

“Walter’s dead too,” he said wearily.

I looked at him. “Why don’t you sit down, Mitchell. You look like you’re out on your feet.”

He sat on the edge of the green La-Z-Boy. I let him get to it in his own way.

“The night after you got shot.” Mitchell’s voice cracked, and he took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his eyes. “Walter had a nice little darkroom out in the garage. Somebody surprised him. Opened him up with a knife. So much blood, it came up over the soles of my shoes. Had to identify him from his clothes. Thank God my sister didn’t find him.”

“Tino,” I said under my breath.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” I said.

Mitchell shook his head. “No way you could. Didn’t make the papers. Detective they sent around was a brother, and he didn’t want to fuck around with what he figured was just one more dead hustler.”

I didn’t answer. I’d met black cops who had nothing but contempt for their own.

Mitchell went on. “This guy, Davis, when he saw the house had been torn to hell—furniture sliced open, carpet pulled up—he asks was Walter dealing or using or both? I told him Walter didn’t even take fucking aspirin. Like he didn’t hear me, he asks what gang he was in.”

I watched Mitchell. There was a quiet anger on his face now.

“So I says to him, he was a member of the skycaps. And the guy starts to write it down. Then he gets it, and I can tell he’s done with me and Walter. Unless the killer shows up with a confession hanging around his neck, he ain’t even gonna think about it anymore.”

Mitchell reached into his Windbreaker and pulled out a manila envelope. He threw it on the bed.

I looked at it. “Walter’s negatives?”

He nodded. “Found them in his locker at work. Figured you was the only one might put them to good use. Wasn’t gonna be Detective Davis.”

Mitchell looked out the window. “And I’m the one told him to hang onto them. You think I helped kill my nephew?”

“I don’t think it would have made any difference. Whatever this is about, they aren’t leaving any loose ends.”

He thought about that for a moment. “All I want is one favor.”

“Name it.”

“If you find the guy, you call me, and I’ll come do the job. That’s not possible, you promise me you’ll make him suffer.”

11

Amazing Grace and the Executioner

On the three-week anniversary of the day I was shot, I went home. I’d had to negotiate hard with my surgeon, Dr. Ted Goldman, a lanky, ponytailed genius with a Hoboken accent like a Mafia hit man and the same reverence for profanity as Benny Joe Willis. He wanted to keep me another week, but I made promises up the ass that I would follow his instructions to the letter, which consisted mostly of putting a no in front of everything I normally have to do, like to do and can’t live without. But I’d have flown in a planeload of Scandinavian supermodels to give him backrubs if that’s what it would have taken to get me out.

Dove Way had never looked so good. Mallory had turned the downstairs library into a convalescence center, complete with hospital bed, exercise equipment, and a television the size of a drive-in theatre. My meals he prepared precisely to the doctor’s specifications, which meant that after two days of stuff that could only be described as warm and wet, I threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t come up with a greasy burger and some heart attack fries.

Fortunately, they’d invented Carney’s for that eventuality,
so Mallory made a run down Sunset for double cheeseburgers and a trough of chili fries, complaining all the way. Tacitus did his part too, sending up dinner the next night. After what I’d done to his restaurant, I was grateful there wasn’t a grenade tucked under the fusilli.

But it was a hollow existence. I couldn’t get rid of the image of Kim, her head hanging over the back of her chair, one hand touching the floor, the other still demurely in her lap. I tried Ambien, then something stronger, and though both put me to sleep, neither kept me from dreaming. I was taking Vicodin, so I couldn’t even drink myself into a stupor. After a while, I just let the night sweats come. And when in doubt, abuse those closest to you. I moved upstairs and shouted at Mallory to get the goddamn hospital smell and all that goddamn equipment out of the library.

Later that week, we buried Kim on one of the few rainy days we get in Southern California. It came down in sheets all the way to Westwood Memorial Park, a cemetery incongruously tucked in behind some high-rises on Wilshire Boulevard. Not many people even know it’s there, but it’s a popular final resting place for Hollywood celebrities, and we passed the graves of Natalie Wood and Roy Orbison on our way to the tented gravesite.

I saw a producer friend, David Permut, bareheaded and wet, heading across the lawn with some flowers, which I assumed were for Rodney Dangerfield, since they’d been close friends. He stopped and said he’d read about the shooting and wished me a quick recovery. I thanked him, then we went on with our respective duties.

Mallory had done the legwork and discovered that Kim’s mother had bought three plots twenty-five years ago, probably hoping her missing husband would someday join her, and there’d be one left for Kim if she wanted it. Kim’s mother and Truman York now occupied two of the graves, and we put Kim in the last. He wasn’t there to speak for himself, but I thought Commander Cayne would have been okay with that.

I didn’t know what kind of service Kim might have wanted, so I told Pierce Brothers, the owners of the cemetery, to select something appropriate. They brought in a Presbyterian minister to read from the Song of Solomon and a talented soprano to sing a quiet rendition of “Amazing Grace.” I chose “Flight One” by the tragically talented poet Gwendolyn MacEwen to be inscribed on her headstone, and I asked the minister to read it at the end. I think Kim would have approved.

During the service, I watched the mourners, but other than Gary Wainwright, who was now on crutches, I didn’t recognize anyone. Most appeared to be coworkers, along with some neighbors who stood with Gary.

Halfway through the service, I saw a large silver BMW pull up and double-park outside the 8-ft. iron fence along Malcom Avenue. But the rain plus the distance and angle made it impossible to see inside. After a moment, the driver’s side window went down, and a pair of binoculars extended out a few inches.

Tourists and paparazzi routinely lurk around L.A. cemeteries, hoping to catch a celebrity attending a funeral or visiting a grave, so it could have been something that simple. But the binoculars held on our little group longer than I thought was necessary to determine we weren’t front page.

Then a yellow DHL truck pulled up behind the BMW and honked, but the car didn’t move. The DHL guy used some loud profanity and gave a New Jersey salute as he navigated the narrow space around the car, but the binoculars remained in place. Shortly after the minister finished the poem, people began to leave, the binoculars disappeared, and the BMW drove away.

On the way out, I asked the funeral director to let me know if anyone called about Kim. I really didn’t expect anything, but I wanted to cover every base.

As Mallory and I were making our way to the car, Gary came up and asked if I knew what was going to happen to Kim’s house. I told him my attorney was checking to see if
there was a will, and I’d let him know. He said he’d fixed the back door and would keep up the lawn. I thanked him.

But I wasn’t ready to go yet. I sent Mallory on to the car, turned and went back to Kim’s grave. I stood over it and read MacEwen’s poem again.

Then I said good-bye and went home, leaving Dana Kimberly York alone with Gwendolyn’s words, the comics, the singers and the stars.

One of the promises I’d made Dr. Goldman was that I wouldn’t drive, but I was going stir-crazy. So the day after the funeral, I grabbed Walter Kempthorn’s negatives and the security DVD from Ralphs and eased myself into my truck. I managed to get to Benny Joe’s driving with one good hand and wincing at the pain in my chest every time I hit a bump. Why I didn’t take the more comfortable Rolls suggests that getting shot lowers your IQ.

Benny Joe isn’t much for anybody else’s pain when he could be talking about his own. “You shoulda seen me when I went for that midnight swim after my fuckin’ wife drained
the pool.” I wanted to laugh, but it hurt to even smile.

“Actually, I was praying you’d check the fuck out,” he continued. “Then those Babe Ruth pictures woulda been mine.”

“Probably not with Jake Praxis around.”

“You still friends with that fuckin’ throat slitter? Jesus, get some fuckin’ taste.”

“Spoken like somebody on the wrong end of a negotiation.”

“Fuck you.”

While the Dobermans slobbered on the living room windows, we went upstairs, and Benny Joe got to work with his equipment. It was like watching Jerry Rice catch passes. Effortless. An hour later, he was printing enhanced blowups of two photos—the one in the paper, and another from a more severe forward angle that Walter had probably taken when he’d first gotten out of the car.

Even working through the van’s windshield, Benny Joe’s magic had been able to enhance Tino and Dante’s faces to the clarity of a mug shot—red headband on Tino and Denver Broncos baseball cap on his partner.

“Give me a couple of days, and I’ll tell you what fuckin’ brand of cigar the stocky asshole is smoking,” Benny Joe said.

The second photo wasn’t as important as I’d hoped. Only a tiny sliver of the first letter of the van’s front license plate. Benny Joe and I agreed it could be B, D, P, or R. Not enough for a DMV run.

Then Benny Joe projected the four and a half seconds of Ralphs footage onto a fifty-inch monitor and went through it one millimeter at a time. He zoomed and corrected and sifted, and when he was finished, the spider on Tino’s forearm was as clear as a National Geo shot. Oval-shaped thorax, seven delicate legs with a space for an eighth and thirteen comma-shaped marks on its abdomen.