Deadly Lullaby (21 page)

Waking up at 5:00
A.M.
and unable to find sleep again, I left Maggie zonked in bed while I threw weights in the living room, did calisthenics, then took a long run. Dawn had broken by the time I returned to my house, a bruised sky obscuring the morning sun. It was one of those humid Southern California mornings when the air was so thick I felt like I was slogging underwater on my way to the front door, and early traffic on the 10 sounded surreal, muted and distant, the sounds of LA failing to have their usual exhilarating effect on me. Maggie was still crashed in bed and part of me wanted to join her, but the restless part won out. After showering, I paced the house drinking coffee with CNN blaring in the background; all my brain received was noise, my mind occupied with thoughts of the last few days.

Something resembling calm finally settled over me, and it was almost 8:00
A.M.
when I crashed next to Maggie in bed.

A hand is now pulling me from a deep ravine of sleep, Maggie's hand, and it is tugging my shoulder as she says, “Babe, wake up, there's a man on the phone for you and he insists on talking.”

My throat is as dry as a zombie's, and my voice sounds like a zombie's when I speak. “Who is it?”

“He won't say.”

I clear my throat. “Which phone is it?”

She hesitates before replying. “The Nokia.”

This information jolts me almost fully awake.

Six cellphones are lined in a row on my living room coffee table: an iPhone I use to communicate with Maggie and the rest of my nonbusiness world; two different-colored disposable Samsung flip-tops I use to communicate with Tarasov and Joe; and two different-colored disposable Motorola flip-tops I use to communicate with Chief and Leo.

The disposable Nokia is the one I use to communicate with my new client, Señor Jorge Tadeo Alvarez, a native Colombian who, I think, periodically resides somewhere in Southern California. I was introduced to him by his cousin, who served time in federal prison with me during my first hitch.

Alvarez is a mysterious man.

All I definitely know of him is that he is an international player, my best guess being that he is an arms smuggler, since his cousin was serving time for weapons violations. I am virtually certain he is a wealthy man, and this I only infer from the amount of money he has agreed to pay me for the services he has asked me to provide.

After thinking about my dealings with him while rubbing sleep from my eyes, I remember that he is also an impatient man.

I shake my head to work some thoughts into my brain and swipe a hand down my face, the skin slowly creeping back in place like cold rubber. I turn from my back to my side, prop myself up on my left elbow, and take the phone from Maggie. I motion with my head toward the bedroom door and give Maggie a wink to indicate my desire for privacy. She complies, nimbly exiting her side of the bed and strolling from the room naked.

That ass,
Jesus.

Another shake of my head to work some thoughts
out
of my brain.

I say into the mouthpiece, “Yes?”

“Our friend is leaving the country today.”

Friend, I am thinking,
friend
…

Oh, hell—Errol Ovando.

Leaving the country?

Today?

“Shit,” I say.

“Yes. We must move today.”

“That is too risky. Our surveillance barely started yesterday. His movements and those of his associates are unknown and therefore unpredictable.”

He hisses his words. “He has no associates to be concerned about. I
know
this. He is a
banker.
”

“Now he is a banker, yes. He is also a crook and was a gang member years ago, and I have no idea who he associates with. But there is more to it than that: security and police patrols at the strip mall where his building is located, the flow of his customers; they are all wild cards at the moment.”

A pause. “I was told you are a competent man.”

“And you were told that because of the way I prepare for operations like this one.”

“You
must
move today or he and my money are lost.”

“Look, I—”

“I will pay you a twenty percent premium for your consideration.”

Hmm, now you might be on to something.

Rubbing my neck, sighing, I say, “What time does he leave town?”

“His plane is scheduled to depart midevening, but he plans to leave his business no later than three
P.M.
”

The digital clock on my nightstand practically cracks up with laughter when it shows me the time of 10:01
A.M.
I barely slept four hours and my body is in pieces, as pulled apart as the whole lobster I ate last night with Maggie at
The Lobster
on Santa Monica Pier, which just now begins clawing at my stomach lining.

“All right, I will get it done,” I say.

A breathy sigh of relief ruffles across his mouthpiece. “Ah, good, very good,” he says and clicks off the phone so fast it is as if he was afraid I would change my mind.

I grumble myself out of bed and head for the living room to fetch my red Motorola disposable to ruin Chief's day, my thought being shit always flows downstream.

The strong smell of marijuana jars me awake, a burst of sunlight hitting my eyes like a flash-bang grenade. Even queasier now that I'm temporarily blinded, my head throbbing and spinning, I roll over to find a blurry female form next to me. My eyes finally focus on a thin wisp of a girl with long, straight blonde hair, wearing nothing but one of my dress shirts completely unbuttoned. She's sitting up in bed, her long legs stretched out, her eyes riveted on the screen of her iPhone, sucking weed from my glass pipe. Most of her makeup rubbed off on me and the sheets, and for the first time I notice her complexion is ruddy—a condition worsened by whisker burn.

She removes the pipe from her mouth, says, “Wow, your eyes are redder than blisters,” and giggles like a little girl.

Sighing, groaning, I run my hand through my hair, thinking, Elaine…Elana, shit, something like that…Yeah, Elaine, of that name I am now certain, a criminal-justice undergrad at UCLA. The memory returns of us dancing like natives at the Rooftop Bar on South Flower, her saying into my ear that she loved the view of the city from up there and me responding that I loved the view down her strapless dress. She laughed at that and called me a butthole, her point being her breasts didn't provide much of a view. She's actually almost as flat as a fifteen-year-old male; as it turned out, she also has about the same amount of sexual control as a fifteen-year-old male.

I scoot myself up and am startled by a cold metal sensation that bites my ass. I lift my left bun and hook a set of my cuffs with my forefinger. Dangling them in front of her, I say, “Whose idea was this?”

“Fuck if I remember,” she says, “but we didn't get too far with it,” and casually kicks off the sheets and lifts her left foot in the air to display my other set of cuffs fixed to her ankle. “I just hope you can find your key. I have to be in class in an hour.”

“Damn, what time is it?”

“Just after ten.”

“God, I have to blow out of here and get to work, pronto.”

I roll out of bed and use the momentum to propel myself into the bathroom. Standing naked at the toilet, urinating, I say to her over my left shoulder, “Elaine, you want some coffee before we leave? Cereal?”

“My name's Elana, butthole, not Elaine.”

“Oh, uh, sorry,” I say—shit—and concentrate on draining my bladder. I flush the toilet just before she says something about an article she's reading and I step to the basin, squeeze what seems like a bucket of eye drops into each eye, quickly wash up and wet my hair, dabbing pomade on my fingers and tousling it into presentable shape. Around 4:00
A.M.
we took a bath before finally using the bed for sleep, so there's no pressing need to shower. I could use a shave, but there's no time.

I hear Elana mumble, “Oh, damn,” from the bed and she hops up and pops her head in the door, her big green eyes wide with alarm, and thrusts the iPhone at me. “Um, you'd better read this. It's about the dude you told me about last night. The one you got in custody for murder?”

“Taquan Oliver?”

“Uh-huh.”

My brow furrows as I lean against the sink and read:

LOS ANGELES—A 24-year-old inmate at the Men's Central Jail committed suicide, authorities said, Thursday evening.

Taquan Oliver, a homeless man from South LA, was found dead in his cell about 7:20
A.M.
Friday in the jail at 441 S. Bauchet St., said coroner's assistant chief Ed Winter. A crude noose made of strips of bedsheet was found around his neck with the other end anchored to cell bars.

Oliver's cause of death was listed as “asphyxiation due to self-strangulation,” Winter said.

“The suicide occurred between 10:00
P.M.
and 2:00
A.M.
during inmate sleeping hours,” Captain Mike Parker of the Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau said. “During the deputies' checks of the cell during the night, the inmate appeared to be sleeping in his cell.”

Oliver's two cellmates slept through the incident, Parker said.

Oliver was charged Thursday in the robbery and murder of an eighteen-year-old female named Sonita Khemra, Parker said. Sources within LAPD's Rampart Division would not comment on how the murder investigation would proceed.

My vision
blurrrs.

I give my head a little shake, pinch the bridge of my nose to clear my eyes before rereading the article. I gaze out the window of my bathroom to check out a small bird chirping from the tree limb just outside; drops of moisture on the window indicate it rained earlier, but now it's a beautiful day, at least for the living—not for Taquan Oliver.

The news finally begins to sink in, and I try to place it in perspective.

“Crooch?” Elana says. “Are you processing this okay?”

“Yeah, it's happened to me before. Four, five years ago when I was in uniform, a child abuser me and my partner arrested offed himself in Central, pretty much the same way Oliver did. But this one doesn't play right with me. Oliver was distraught over his predicament, but I never read him as suicidal,” I say, and something occurs to me. “I wonder why my lieutenant didn't let me know about this. The watch commander at Rampart should've called him as soon as he found out.”

With something of a guilty look on her face, she takes my iPhone from behind her back and hands it to me. “This was dinging like mad on the coffee table.”

“Christ,” I say, snatching the phone and inspecting the missed-call and voice-message icons on the screen. “Yeah, my lieutenant tried to call me twice, once at five this morning and once about an hour ago. Elai—Elana, we have to split, ASAP.”

“That's cool but, uh”—she raises her foot—“the key to these cuffs?”

“Yeah, right.” I scan the room. “It's around here somewhere.” I hope.

“And can I have another hit of your blow before I leave? I need a bump. Oh, and I need a ride home. I live just over on Vinson. It should be on your way.”

“Affirmative on both.”

She steps in to me and puts her arms around my neck. “On the way to my place, could you run your siren for me again like last night? That was so fucking cool.”

Run my siren for her, I think,
like last night
?

I thumb Abel's speed-dial number as soon as I drop off Elana. The call rolls over to voicemail, and I leave a message saying I'm on the way in. I'm anxious to get the details on Oliver's apparent suicide, and I decide to call Cyril Lopez, a sergeant with the sheriff's department and midlevel supervisor at Central Jail. The cruiser's pointed in the general direction of downtown when he finally answers, his voice as quick and high-pitched as a piccolo.

“Lopez.”

“Cyril, it's Crucci.”

“Crooch, man, ain't seen you in over a month. What'chu been doin' with your collars, chainin' 'em up in your fuckin' basement? Or you just been sittin' on your
culo gordo
?”

“Cyril, where were you last week? I hauled a burglar into booking, a meth head who went as wild as a raped ape as soon as he smelled the filth from the dungeon you run down there. You were nowhere to be found. Nobody can ever find your
culo gordo
when there's man's work to do.”

“
¡Vete al carajo!,
man, you hear what I'm sayin'?”

I laugh. “
¡Vete al carajo!
yourself, asshole….Listen, Cyril, I'm working a case that involves a swinger you had in the block last night. Taquan Oliver?”

“Oh, yeah, man, a real pain in my fuckin' neck, like I need one more.”

“I'm on the way in to Rampart now to talk to my lieutenant about it. He didn't answer the phone when I called him, but my guess is he's going to be pissed as hell that I didn't answer his calls last night. I'm thinking I can get a foot out of the doghouse by getting briefed on what went down before I get there.”

“Anything you need,
ese,
bring it on.”

“You can start by telling me what happened to Oliver.”

“Bottom line is the big
hombre
did the Dutch with a bedsheet; thaz about it. I got the report from the floor bull right here in an email somewhere, hang on….Yeah, says here the inmate was calm and well behaved the last time he checked on him. Sedate is one of the words the bull used, and lethargic, but said he gave no sign he needed to be on suicide watch. Oliver's cellies said he had the jailhouse blues last night, and talked about offin' hisself. They said they didn't put no stock in it, and about shit their pants when they found his ass x'd out early this mornin'.”

“Any sign the cellies did him and rigged it as a swinger?”

“Not that my guys reported, and I doubt those fucks could do Oliver. They were gangbangers and mean as
el Diablo,
but, shit, that describes over half the population in here. There's no sign of a struggle, and says here Oliver was a big boy.”

A big boy, sure, with a hyoid bone just as fragile as that in the puniest man in LA; one well-placed karate chop to his throat while he was asleep and the two men could string him up with ease. Cyril knows this, but I'll not rag him, respecting his right to cover his department's backside. “Yeah,” I say, “you're right. What flavor bangers were they?”

“Uh, lemme see…tatt histories show they're E/S Oriental Boyz, an OLB offshoot. They're zips, Vietnamese or Cambodians would be my guess from their names. They wouldn't admit to no affiliation, though, at booking.”

My heart jumps into my throat; the fuckers are affiliated with the Oriental Lazy Boyz, the same gang Khang founded as a youth. “That's interesting…What are their names?”

“Hell,
gato,
I ain't got time to spell out these ching-chong names for your illiterate ass. I'll just email you the report. What's your address?”

I give him the address. “Thanks, Cyril. Anything else about this I ought to know about?”

“Yeah, says here that about an hour ago these guys got transported over to Rampart to talk to Lieutenant Abel—your supervisor, right?”

“Shit.”

Cyril laughs and says, “He's grillin' 'em without your tardy ass, doin' your job for you. Shit, man, you are so
fucked.
”

“
Thanks,
Cyril….Anything else I need to know?”

“Probably a lot more, yeah, but I ain't got it. You tapped me out.”

“All right, I owe you one.”

“Damn right you do. Look, Crooch, if Abel comes down on you, tell him to kiss my big hard ass. I know that prissy
bastardo,
and he won't fuck with me the way he does you, you big fuckin' sissy.”

Cyril and I sign off with our usual juvenile insults, and seconds later the email indicator
pings
on my MDT. Driving on the 5 now, rolling slow in midmorning traffic, I open it, scan the jail incident report, and find nothing Cyril didn't mention. I run Oliver's cellies, Vann Phan and Peng Vannak, through COPLINK. Both are in their early twenties and have baby rap sheets, minor drug-related crap; Phan also has a minor assault beef that was conditionally discharged a little over a year ago. Both were placed in Central yesterday afternoon within minutes of each other—Phan for shoplifting in a trinkets shop in the Galleria Market in Little Tokyo, Vannak for dealing blunts in Bunker Hill at the corner of Grand and Second. Both arresting officers were uniforms out of Central Station—Davenport and Montalban. They aren't partners, but off duty they're as inseparable as finger and thumb, and rumors have been flying around for months that the only thing these guys won't fix for a buck is their bent schemes.

Driving with my left hand and drumming a military tattoo on the base of the MDT with the fingers of my right, I find scenarios sifting through my head, blending and congealing. The resulting concoction smells as rotten as week-old fish, and my hope is that Abel isn't so fucking steamed at me that he bars me from paying my compliments to the chefs.

No one has to tell me to proceed directly to Abel's office. The desk sergeant tells me to do it anyway when I rush by him, and the fucker's shit-eating grin reminds me of a sibling who knows his brother's about to receive a good spanking.

Walking through the squad room to my cubicle, blood pulsing in my ears, I see Abel through the glass wall of his office, poring over papers at his desk. He must notice me from the corner of his eye, because he gestures me inside with a single, terse wave of his hand without taking his eyes from the papers.

My cellphone vibrates in my pocket when I get to within a few steps of his office; I let the call roll to voicemail without checking the display to see who it is. As expected, Abel's bombardment begins as soon as I close the door to his office behind me. His arms folded before him on the desktop, he says, “Did you get my messages?”

“Yes…finally.”

“All right, let me have it, your excuse for not calling.”

“I only have reasons, no excuse.”

He rocks back in his swivel chair, extends his arms grandly. “Oh, c'mon, damn it, your excuses are always so creative. I've been waiting since five
fucking
hundred hours to hear this one.”

“Lieutenant, look, we can talk about the four bottles of wine I shared last night with the blonde I ended up sleeping with, or we can talk about how Khang got Vann Phan and Peng Vannak assigned to Taquan Oliver's cell last night—your call.”

Abel blinks and shakes his head as if recovering from a right cross, says, “How did—”

“There was a story about Taquan's suicide in the
Times
this morning, and I called the jail and got the scoop when I couldn't reach you.” I allow myself a small smile. “How did Phan and Vannak's interrogations go? They take the Fifth?”

“You—” he says, clamps his lips into a thin line, and looks away, sighing through his nose and tapping his desk blotter with the eraser end of his number-two pencil. It takes awhile for him to get over my theft of his thunder, but when the pencil-tapping finally slows down he says, “No. To my surprise, they answered every question I had without blinking. Their story was solid, and they laughed at me when I hinted that someone hired them to kill Oliver.”