Flipping Out (2 page)

'You
know even less about women than you do about poker,' Tony said. 'Marisol hasn't
cooked in ten years, and about the only cold thing she's got waiting for me
tonight is her shoulder.'

'Oooh,'
Terry groaned. 'A big sigh of disappointment from the crowd here at Augusta, as
they find out that their Latin hero is as unlucky at love as he is at cards.'

'Come
on, Tony, make up your mind,' Charlie Knoll said. 'I've got burglars to catch.'

'And
Lomax and I have homicides to solve,' Terry said. 'And Drabyak has prostitutes
to frisk and pimps to shake down. If you fold, you can still go home with your
last few bucks and what's left of your dignity.'

Dominguez
had two pair showing. Jacks and deuces. The third deuce had already popped up
and was in Reggie Drabyak's discarded hand. There was only one card in the deck
that would win the game for my trash-talking partner, and Tony Dominguez shoved
his last remaining chips into the pot to see if Terry actually had it.

'Call.'

Terry
put his thumb under his hole card. 'And the green jacket at this year's
thrilling Masters tournament here in Augusta, Georgia, goes to...' He flipped
over the deuce of spades. 'Detective Terry Biggs, LAPD Homicide. The crowd goes
wild, and his caddy, Detective Mike Lomax, is the first to run out onto the
green and congratulate him.'

'Your
caddy?' Tony said, shoving his losing hand to the middle of the table. 'Is that
what you call him now that the two of you are shacking up together?'

'Let
me apologise to the audience for that display of poor sportsmanship,' Terry
said, still broadcasting into his beer bottle. 'That remark was highly
inappropriate and totally inaccurate. Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs are not caddy
shacking. Mike and the future Mrs Lomax are waiting for their new house to be
renovated. They're living with Terry and Marilyn Biggs on a temporary basis.'

'First
of all,' I said, 'Diana is not the future Mrs anything. She's Miz Trantanella,
and this little experiment of buying a house and co-signing a mortgage is the
first of many steps we are taking before we even talk about getting married.
Second of all, from what Marilyn tells me, she's also living with you on a
temporary basis.'

Terry
shovelled the pile of chips toward him. 'And when I return from the poker wars
with this handsome haul, she'll stick around yet another night.'

'Reg,
you need help battening down the hatches?' Charlie said.

'No,
I'm gonna sleep on the boat,' Drabyak said. 'Jo is working a wedding tonight,
so she won't be home till late. She took my truck, so I'll go home in the
morning and switch vehicles.'

Tony
and I helped clean up while Charlie counted the chips. 'And the big wiener of
the evening is Biggs,' he said. 'Sixty-two bucks.'

'So
then the big whiner of the night must be Touchdown,' Terry said. 'Nice game,
TD. Better luck next time.'

Dominguez
gave him a one-finger salute.

'I
sense anger issues,' Terry said. 'You really need to see that expensive shrink
of yours more often.'

Tony
Dominguez had grown up poor and fatherless on the predominantly Mexican streets
of East LA. His mother, Luz, spent her whole life cleaning other people's
houses. When Tony was ten, she started working for Ford Jameson, psychiatrist
to the rich and famous. Jameson took to Tony from the get-go, and provided the
positive male role model that had long been missing. The good doctor had been
generous, buying Tony a used car when he needed wheels, helping him through
college, and always available for therapy sessions at a hundred percent off his
outrageous hourly rate.

'Hey,
baby,' Tony said, 'if anyone needs his head examined, it's you.'

'I've
only got sixty-two dollars,' Terry said, waving his winnings at Tony. 'I don't
think I could afford your guy.'

'Do
any of you fellas want to spend the night on the boat with me?' Reggie said.
'Biggs has Lomax, and I'm feeling kind of jealous.'

'If
I can't have Mike, I don't want any of you,' Charlie said.

'Why
don't you stay here by yourself, Reg?' Terry said. 'Your luck is bound to
change, and you just may get the first good hand you've had all night.'

That
got a big laugh. We helped Reggie clean up, and by ten fifteen, Charlie, Tony,
Terry, and I were on the dock, heading for our cars.

Five
cops. Drinking beer, playing cards, busting balls. I'll never forget that
Sunday night. It was the happiest time the five of us would ever spend together
again.

I
read Dante's
Inferno
when I was in college. From what I can remember, there are nine circles of
hell. The first one is for the unbaptised, who weren't really sinners but wound
up in limbo because they didn't accept Jesus. From a cop perspective, I think
of it as the misdemeanour circle.

As
you move your way along the ladder of sin, you go deeper and deeper into hell.
The eighth circle is for those who knowingly commit evil deeds. That includes
panderers, false prophets, sowers of discord, and the way I see it, building
contractors who take your money, don't do the work, and never return your phone
calls.

So
there's a spot reserved in the eighth circle of hell for Hal Hooper.

He's
the reason Diana and I are currently homeless. We'd been living together for
over a year. Sometimes her place, sometimes mine. A few months ago we bought a
house together. A fixer-upper. We hired Hooper to fix it up.

We
were supposed to move in by the end of August, but by September first, the
house was still missing half a roof, a working bathroom, and several other
amenities. Hooper gave us a bunch of lame excuses and swore it would be livable
in another month. He didn't say finished. Just livable.

We
had each given up our rentals, our furniture was in storage, and we couldn't
afford thirty nights in a hotel. In desperation, we moved in with Big Jim. I
told Diana it would be a big mistake to try to live with my father, but she's a
glass-half-full person. 'It's only a month,' she said. 'How bad could it be?'

It
didn't take long to find out.

I
had braced Diana for the meddling. I warned her that he would pry into every
corner of our personal lives and drop less-than-subtle hints about the joys of
getting married and bearing children. But I never mentioned the peeing.

The
first night, Diana and I went upstairs to our bedroom and Jim took the dogs out
for one last pee. They stood in the yard, he yelled, 'Business,' and the four
of them relieved themselves under our window. Three dogs and Jim.

When
I called him on it the next morning, he said, 'So I took a piss. For God's
sake, Mike, it's dark out.'

But
darkness does not cover up industrial-strength farting or Big Jim's orgasmic
groans of relief. You want to take the romance out of your evening? Get a
three- hundred-pound teamster to empty his bladder under your bedroom window
every night.

Even
Jim's wife, Angel, who is usually pretty successful at reining him in, couldn't
stop him from putting his nose in our business or his foot in his mouth. After five
days and a variety of personal-boundary violations, the topper came when Jim,
ever helpful, took our laundry from the dryer, folded it, and left it in our
room. That Friday night at dinner, he suggested that Angel buy 'one of those
sexy black thongs like Diana wears.'

Angel
smacked the back of his fat head, Diana covered her eyes, and I grabbed the
phone. By Saturday morning Diana and I were packed and headed to Sherman Oaks
to move in with Terry, Marilyn, and the girls.

It
was my first day commuting to work from the Valley, and we were creeping along
the 101 at twenty miles an hour.

The
ribbon of taillights in front of us went bright red, and Terry rolled the car
to a stop. 'So far, so good,' he said.

'We're
going to be late for Kilcullen's Monday morning briefing, so you can't be
talking about the traffic. You must be bragging about the fact that we've
managed to live under the same roof for forty-eight hours without any
bloodshed.'

'Hey,
I know it's only been one weekend, but you've got to admit that bunking with us
is more fun than living with Big Jim.'

I
nodded. 'Bunking with the Taliban would be more fun than living with Big Jim.'

We
were fifteen minutes late getting to the station, but as it turned out,
Kilcullen's meeting was cancelled. Just as we pulled into the parking lot,
about twenty cops, some in plainclothes, some in uniform, came pouring out of
the station and began jumping into their cars.

We
saw Wendy Burns, and Terry honked at her.

Wendy
is our direct supervisor, the Detective III who assigns cases to the homicide
teams. She's a total pro, smart, reasonable, and a great buffer to have between
us and our less-than-reasonable boss, Lieutenant Brendan Kilcullen.

'You
guys just caught a big one,' she said as Terry and I got out of the car. 'Follow
me.'

'What's
going on?' I said.

'Reggie
Drabyak's wife was shot.'

'Jesus,
is she OK?'

'She's
dead.'

Reggie
Drabyak is not the most dynamic cop on the force. Average height, slightly more
than average weight, slightly less than average personality. In two years, when
he retires and hangs a 'gone fishing' sign on his door, that's exactly what
he'll be doing. Fishing. For him, police work is just a way to pay for his boat
and his bait.

Jo
Drabyak, on the other hand, was chatty, funny, and bubbly - a total charmer.
Five years ago, after a series of colourful but unsuccessful career choices,
she became an event planner. Weddings, bar mitzvahs, and because it's LA,
parties of every imaginable stripe for the Weird and Famous.

Jo
grew up in Summit, New Jersey, and dropped out of high school to become a
modern dancer. She had the desire and the drive, but not the knees. She moved
to Los Angeles to conquer Hollywood and wound up as a production assistant on
The Price Is Right.
That's where she met Petty Officer First Class
Reggie Drabyak. Reggie was in the audience with a bunch of other sailors. He
got the call to
come on down
and won himself a washer- dryer.

Jo's
job was to ship the prizes to the winners. Reggie didn't have much use for major
appliances on an aircraft carrier, so he said, 'Have dinner with me, and you
can ship my Maytag to your house.'

A
year later, Reggie quit the navy, joined LAPD, and offered Jo the chance to
spend the rest of her life washing and drying his laundry with hers. From what
I could tell, it was a damn good life. Until today.

'I
guess you knew Jo Drabyak a lot better than I did,' Terry said as we followed
the caravan of cop cars west on Sunset.

'I
like Reggie,' I said, 'but I was never a big fan of sitting in the hot sun all
day hoping to catch my dinner. So, when I first met him, I didn't hang out with
him much. Then my wife met his wife at a cop picnic, and they really hit it
off. Joanie and Jo went to yoga classes together, they'd have lunch, go
shopping - they really got close. Eventually, we wound up doing a lot of
couples stuff together. When Joanie was dying, people would call or send cards,
but only two cop wives were there in the flesh. Your wife was one of them. The
other was Jo.'

The
Drabyaks lived on Alta Vista in a mission-style white stucco house with a red
tiled roof. It would probably go for a million plus, which is modest by LA
standards, but completely out of range for the average cop and his wife.
Luckily, they bought it fifteen years ago when a two- income couple could still
afford a down payment and a mortgage.

Terry
pulled in behind Wendy's car. She had a street map in one hand and was already
delegating detectives to spread out and canvass a six-block radius. 'The
lieutenant's waiting for you in the garage,' she said.

Jo
was lying on the floor a few feet from Reggie's pickup. Her legs were at a
right angle to her torso. One arm was extended to the left, the other was
pinned beneath her. Her left cheek was resting on the oil-stained concrete.
Reggie had said she was working a wedding last night, and her clothes seemed to
bear him out. She had on a flowery summer dress and sensible tan shoes with low
heels. Her honey-blonde hair fanned out across her back and shoulders, but one
of the fan blades was missing.

I
knelt down beside her. 'I'm not sure, but it looks like a hunk of her hair has
been chopped off. Can't really tell because of the blood.'

'Bullet
to the back of the head,' Terry said. 'Looks more like an execution than a
random homicide.'

'Don't
jump to conclusions,' Kilcullen said.

'I
always jump to conclusions,' Terry said. 'It's just that you're not usually on
the scene to watch me do my job wrong.'