Deadly Lullaby (11 page)

Now he goes head over heels: Chief gets his nickname not only from the fact he resembles the big Injun in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
but also because he is as proficient as an Apache ghost at tracking people—and even more passionate about it. In fact, some people—namely his ex-wife and several so-called
girlfriends
—have officially complained that this passion of his constitutes stalking in violation of the California penal code. “Calm down now, Chief,” I say, “and listen to me. Ovando's home and work addresses are written on this paper. I want a detailed report that notes every movement he makes from the time he wakes up 'til he gets off work. He owns a bank, and when he is at this bank I need a record of every swinging dick that walks in there. You know the drill. Before we make our move, we need to know if he is under surveillance, and if so, who is doing it. Do this over the next few days, then let's talk tactics.”

He wipes his mouth, practically bouncing in his seat like a kid ready to leave for the amusement park. “What are we doing after the surveillance checks out?”

“The usual.”

He understands and is fine with it. “Ah, the usual.”

“Right. Plus we are going to make a withdrawal from Ovando's bank.”

His euphoric demeanor disappears so quickly and completely you would think I slapped him. “Don't tell me we're gonna rob a fuckin' bank.”

“In a manner of speaking, yeah, we are.”

His voice is a low growl. “Babe, in all my years, I either definitely robbed somethin' or I definitely didn't.” His teeth are clenched. “I never robbed nothin'
in a manner of speakin'.
”

“You see far too much black and white, pal.” I make a grand gesture at the sky. “Take note of the dazzling array of colors in our universe. Expand your horizons. Be all you can be.”

He hangs his head, pinches the bridge of his nose and squints. “Why do you always hav'ta drag shit out?”

“What is wrong with you, scared of a little bank robbery?”

“I swear, if you don't—”

“It is a walk in the park. It is taking candy from a baby. It is shooting ducks in—”

“Babe.”

“All right, all right, no need to worry.” I take a drink of beer, sighing casually after I swallow. “It is an inside job.”

“An inside job.”

“Yeah. A new client of mine lined it up. Rest assured he knows what he is—”

One of my cellphones rings from its position on the table and I lean over to check out the display.

“I have to answer this, Chief. Joe Sacci is calling.”

This call is a surprise. Me and Joe agreed last night that I would call him at precisely noon today, which is almost three hours away.

My hope is there is not another mess to clean up. If this is why Joe is calling, it means
two
more jobs before retirement.

Forget the overdone sets you see in cop shows, those interrogation rooms with big two-way mirrors and conference tables that could seat a corporate board. It's all Hollywood bullshit. The reality of it is that the interrogation rooms here at Rampart Division are as cramped and intimate as a Catholic confessional, so designed to achieve the same purpose: a confession in exchange for perceived salvation. Though I walked into this interrogation room with all the moral authority of a backsliding priest, I've grudgingly set aside that feeling, along with all the sins thrust upon me yesterday. The sinner I have in the box at the moment requires my full devotion.

Said sinner is Taquan Oliver, the kind of man you know from a glance was a jock in his youth—a football lineman, a wrestler, maybe even a power forward cast from the Charles Barkley mold. You also know from a glance Taquan's seen better days. He's twenty-nine going on a heart attack, his chalky black skin streaked with crack sweat and his right knee working harder than the last good piston in an eight-cylinder engine. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, so they're all over the place, rubbing his face, his nappy 'fro, picking at the congealed cut on the bridge of his nose.

Taquan looks off to the side and uses his hand to brake his knee, mumbling under his breath, “Crucci, Crucci,” before looking at me in a way that doubts my very existence. “You played for Roosevelt?”

“Yes, Taquan, I was a standout starter at tight end my senior year, though not in the normal sense of the word.” A smile. “I stood out because I was the only Anglo starter on the team.”

He smiles though the haze, mulls this over. “Oh, yeah, now I remember you,” but the fact that he doesn't is written all over his face. It's a polite lie, though, one I'm surprised he's considerate enough to even bother telling.

I return his smile as best I can and lean back in my chair.

I've slow-talked Taquan for almost thirty minutes now. At first he was willing to talk about minor facts associated with the murder of Sonita Khemra, the eighteen-year-old found strangled to death in MacArthur Park last night. Then he became too shaken to continue and looked ready to take the Fifth again. When a criminal suspect takes the Fifth, the interview has to cease. Cold. No browbeating, which means no further questions and no attempts to talk them out of their inalienable constitutional right to remain silent. Otherwise, nothing they say is worth dog shit in court.

There are times when I don't care what the information I browbeat out of somebody is worth in court. Today I care because cameras are recording my actions.

Which is why thirty minutes ago I threw the process in reverse and avoided the subject of Sonita Khemra like it was nuclear waste.

Since then, I've been gaining his trust.

Our conversation began with where we grew up—me in Boyle Heights, he in East LA near Atlantic Park—and the conversation inevitably rolled around to the fact that we each played high school football. Turns out he played defensive end for my high school archrival, Garfield. Four years apart in age, me being the older one, we each played in the annual East LA Classic, our schools' big rivalry game, though obviously not at the same time.

I can't remember the last time I talked about playing in the Classic. The game was the last one of my (very average) career when I was a senior, and the old thug was due to be released the day after. To his credit, he tried like hell to convince Corrections to release him a day early so he could watch me play, even got his lawyers involved. The Commissioner of Corrections wouldn't give up one day, not one stinking day, which gives you a good idea of what official California thought of Babe Crucci. Unfortunately for the Garfield kids that lined up against me in the Classic, the fact that the authorities dissed the old man really pissed me off and I played way above my head. That was the last time I felt any disappointment whatsoever at my father being behind bars.

Having established with Taquan that we're homies, I decide to keep my mouth shut. The man's been throwing off classic signs of guilt—fluttering hands and feet, an inability to maintain eye contact, an overall jittery demeanor—and my strategy is to let him lead the conversation now. He'll cave soon enough. Cocky guys like Taquan, especially those who've never been arrested before, always try to charm and lie their way out of custody. If they're guilty, their low mentality being what it is, sooner or later they almost always say something incriminating. They can't help it. It's their nature.

The seconds tick by slowly. Taquan stares at me and starts working that knee again, rubbing his 'fro and nose and chin again. He sniffs, wipes his nose with his wrist. “Crucci, man, why you bein' so quiet now?”

“Why do you think?”

“I think you're ready to talk business.”

His perception surprises me. I shrug. “I am if you are, no rush.”

He thinks, nods, leans forward on his elbows. “Man, you need to help me get outta this. I didn't
do
nothin' to that girl.”

I draw a heavy sigh and shrug my hands before folding them on the tabletop. “I want to help you, Taquan, I do. But you'll have to help me.” I nod at the clear plastic bag on the table between us that's been bagged and tagged as evidence. “Officers that chased you down say they found that purse in the trash can at the corner of Alvarado and Sixth, close to where they caught up with you. The purse or anything inside it gonna have your fingerprints on them?”

He lifts his gaze to me, then quickly looks away, body language you'd normally associate with guilt, and places his hands on the table. Compared to the rest of him, his huge hands are as sterile as a surgeon's. After evidence techs scraped away the caked dirt and grime, dug out every particle crusted underneath his fingernails, and bagged it all as evidence, they made him scrub. Now he meets my eyes again before he places one paw over the other, covering multiple fresh lacerations on the back of his right hand, and stares at them like he'd saw both clean off if he could.

Another indication of guilt.

Earlier, he claimed he got some of the scratches when he dove into some bushes to hide, got the rest when he fought with the blue boys who finally ran him down. My obvious take on it is that they're defensive wounds Sonita inflicted during her death struggle. There's no need to argue with him about which version is true. It'll take a few weeks, but the DNA lab will resolve it for us. The techs found flesh under Sonita's fingernails.

Still staring down at his hands, he says, “Man, you just want me to come out and say I did it, that I kilt that girl.”

No, my strategy from the start has been to get him to admit to small facts one by one, until he admits to so many the truth will emerge of its own accord. “Taquan,” I say, “all I want is the truth from you. You can start by telling me whether your prints are gonna be found on the girl's personal items—her purse, her wallet…We're gonna know one way or another when the lab results come out, so you might as well tell me now.”

He glances at the wall to his right, as if he'll never see the city beyond it again. “Yeah, they'll prob'ly be on the purse—wallet, too.”

“And the cash in your wallet”—a glance at the report before me—“the, what, three hundred and sixty-two bucks? Think the girl's prints will be on those bills?”

He nods slowly and sags in his chair, defeated. “The dead girl, yeah, I took the bills from her wallet….That's what you want to hear, right?”

“Only if it's the truth.”

“It's true.”

I nod. “Did you take her cellphone?”

He shakes his head. “No, didn't see no cell, and that's the truth, too.”

“I believe you,” I say, not knowing or caring at this point whether I mean it or not. “All right, you ready to tell me what happened?”

“You won't believe me. Don't matter what I say.”

“Only if you bullshit me, Taquan. If you tell me the truth…” I shrug, allowing him to finish my sentence in his head however it suits him.

Taquan has a faraway look in his eyes. “I'd just scored with this PR I told you about, the one I buy from? Then I got smoked up next to the bushes over on Park View, near Seventh.”

“What did you smoke?”

“Crack. Some weed, too, earlier, but that ain't no thing.”

“How high were you?”

“
Too
fucked up, man.” Taquan shakes his head in self-disgust and looks away. “Fuckin'
fried
…Been smokin' every chance I get for almost a month, ever since I lost my job at Sanitation.”

“You high now?”

“
What?
Hell no, man, wish I was. I'm crashin' hard.”

Out goes my best sympathetic smile to him. “All right, you got high in the bushes on Park View near Seventh. Then what did you do?”

“Just took off walkin', you know, feelin' good. A little crazy but…good.”

“Where'd you go?”

He shrugs. “Not real sure. Hung out around the lake awhile until some Asian junkies started fuckin' with me, askin' if I got change to give 'em and shit, and I split and just cruised. Must've crossed Wilshire somewhere 'cause I remember some dudes playin' soccer, you know, in the field over there?”

“Sure.”

His voice changes, tenses. “And next thing you know is I'm walkin' on that path over there close to Park View, near Sixth this time.”

He lowers his eyes to stare at the table, just stares and stares.

“Which paved path were you walking on? There's one that runs right next to the sidewalk on Park View, the one that's visible from the street, and there's another one that runs more or less parallel to that one that's farther inside the park.”

He's been nodding since I was halfway through my question, a good sign. “It was the one inside the park, the one you can't see from the street 'cause of the bushes there.”

“Ah, okay, so the Pavilion was to your right?”

“Yeah,” he says after pondering it some. “I guess it was, yeah.”

I nod. “So you were walking toward Sixth, then.”

“Right, close to where that path joins up with that other one there, just up ahead a ways.”

All right, he's almost on top of the murder scene at that point, on the curved path with the bushes to his left. “Go on, man.”

Onward he goes: “Then I heard something in the bushes close by, like…like…I dunno.” He runs his hand down his face, takes a deep breath. “Like a squirrel dyin', I guess, or a more like a cat, maybe. You ever heard a squirrel or cat die?”

“Can't say that I have, no.”

He scrunches his eyes together, holds them together that way and looks at the tabletop a beat, then looks at me. “Me neither. But that's what it sounded like. Maybe that's a dumb thing to say, but that's what it sounded like. Like a little squeal or something like that, and a huffin' sound, like…at the end.”

“So do you hear anything after that?”

It was as if I'd said nothing. “Then you know what I heard?”

“What?”

“A man.”

“Did he say something?”

A nod. “Somethin' I couldn't understand, crazy shit, real mean, and that's what made me walk in there, through the bushes, 'cause it didn't sound good, you know? It sounded like somethin' wrong, bad wrong, and I walked in there and saw this man standin' there in the dark. He saw me and I froze up, you know, scared, and he just took off runnin' toward Park View, fast as hell, and I looked 'round and saw that girl there and was thinkin', ‘Ah, man, the motherfucker kilt her,
kilt
her,' and then I saw her purse next to her feet, and I got real scared, you know, knowin' y'all'd think I did it and all, that
I
kilt her, but I didn't kill her, I
didn't
…but I grabbed her purse, though, I sure did, which I know's wrong but I did it anyway 'cause I
need
money, man, no job an' all an' smokin' that junk an' all, an' so I took off runnin' in the opposite direction of the man.” He turned away from the space he'd been staring into over my shoulder and looks into my eyes. “Then y'all caught me.”

His shoulders slump, his breathing shallows. He thinks he's shot his wad, but he hasn't. There's more there, more inside his head he doesn't know he has or that he's intentionally withholding. I have to extract that information before some crack or meth residue seeps into his brain and dissolves it from his short-term memory bank—or, assuming he's been pumping me full of lies, before he thinks of more lies.

I allow him a few sips from the can of Coke I got him earlier and go back at him.

“What did the man look like, Taquan?”

He looks up, shrugs. “Short but not skinny, pumped, you know, with muscles, but pretty short.”

“You remember more than that about him.”

“It was dark an' I was fucked up, you know? Scared. And, man, he
bolted
when he saw me, just fuckin' hauled ass
outta
there.”

“What about his face?”

A shrug. “Too dark to see.”

“Age?”

“I dunno.”

“Long hair, short hair?”

“Short and slicked back, kind'a like yours. Shiny, too, like he had the same stuff in his hair you got in yours. Gel or somethin', you know?”

“What color?”

“I'd say dark color, but it was
dark
outside, so…”

“How about his clothes?”

He shakes his head, huffing air like he's close to exhaustion. “Seems like I might'a saw his bare arms, but it was too dark outside to tell anything else, and I was—”

“Stoned, right, you've mentioned that, but you can't say what kind of shirt or pants the guy was wearing?”

“Shit, man, I don't know.” He plops his elbow on the table and rests his head in the crook of his arm. His voice is muffled. “You wearin' me the fuck
out,
man.”