L. A. Mischief (11 page)

He pulled out the Drew Street murder book. She and her daughter had been shot with a .25 caliber, probably an automatic. Maria Real had a long rap sheet given her young age. No father had been listed on the birth certificate of Adora Beatriz Real. Martinez had interviewed the living relatives he could locate and only her grandmother had given him anything. The girl had been born trouble according to her eighty-two year old grandmother who Martinez had called a sharp-tongued
abuela
who reminded him painfully of his mother-in-law. “That one could peel paint off the wall with her tongue.” Martinez had married into a huge family when he’d wed his Mexican born wife.

The closest guess Maria’s grandmother would make on the
bebé pobre’s
father was an OG, original gangster from the
Sureños
set who had bewitched her baby girl and ruined her. She had turned to the streets after that and none of her
abuela
’s pleas or prayers had done any good.

“She was lost,
pobre nino
. Lost to the drugs and the street.
”
Martinez had told him, shaking his head in disgust. “She tried to do good by the girl, but she couldn’t shake the meth. Same old story, only the accents change.”

Martinez had figured the shooters weren’t out to get the girl, but she’d been in the wrong place with the wrong person. If they could figure out who she’d been with that fateful day they might be able to work out who the shooter was. “Forget following the money,” Martinez said. “Follow the tweakers.”

“Well we both know someone knows something,” David said. “We just need to find the lever to get them to talk.”

“Someone’s got to be feeling bad about that kid going down like that.”

David nodded. “How much you want to bet grandma knows something?”

“I don’t bet on sure things.” Martinez stood up and grabbed his jacket, a hideous houndstooth that looked like it came from Sally Ann. “So let’s go
hable abuelita
.”

Maria’s grandmother was indeed a sharp tongued sprite who scorched the two nosy detective’s hides with a stream of blistering Spanish that David did not ask Martinez to translate. He knew enough of the language to know he’d never heard anyone’s grandmother talk that way. When she finally stopped her barrage and fell to furiously rocking in the chair that had to be as old as she was, he stepped onto the rickety wooden veranda beside her and held out his hand.

“We want to catch the men who did this to your granddaughter and her child.”

“Will you?”

David nodded. “Yes, we will.”

“You cannot stop these men.”

“Begging your pardon,
Abuela
,” Martinez said softly. “But we will. We just need to know who they are.”

She started rocking again, her tiny feet scuffing the faded termite eaten boards under her feet. “Find them,
oficiales.
Find them for my
bebé pobre.”

David knelt beside her, taking her hands in his. “Give us their names, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel old.”

“Yes, ah,
Señora
Robles.”

“She was back with that
Sureños
, though I tell her he no good for her,” Robles said with a very unladylike snort. “She love him she says. He ruin her life, but she love him. He was no good. Then or now—”

“His name,
Abuela
,” Martinez said. “We need his name.”

“Bautista Goyo. Big G.” She pursed her thin lips. “Stupid names. I knew his mother, bless her soul.”

“Who does he run with? Who’s in his set?”

“Ronaldo Torres. He called Lil T by his boys.” Robles made another face, her mass of wrinkles screwing up, making her look like a brown walnut. “They are thugs. I tell Maria this and she laugh in my face. He is her man, she says. Well now look at what her man did to her.”

“What set did they run in, Mrs. Robles?” David pressed her.

She shook her wizened head. “He was a
carnales
in the
Mexikanemi
. A soldier in their war against God and the people.”

Mexican Mafia. Big in the prison populations of Chino, San Quentin and other California correctional institutions.
Los sureños, Sur
13,
sureños trece
or
La EME,
were a Southern California network of gangs heavily involved with DTOs, or Drug Trafficking Organizations in and out of prisons. Any one a half dozen rival gangs could have made the attempted hit. There was no shortage of suspects.

“Do you know where we can find these men?” David asked.

She gestured down the street toward Estara Street. “The corner. That is where they hang out.”

It occurred to David that Drew Street was literally a stone’s throw from Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens. But there was no peace here. He looked around Robles’s tidy, nearly grassless yard, a sharp contrast to the street beyond the rusting fence that was the only barrier from the world beyond her door. An abandoned sofa on the curb had been sprayed with graffiti. Even the scarred eucalyptus tree beside it bore gang tags. From where he sat he could see S-13 carved into the mottled trunk. But another tag had been sprayed over with a large black banger tag. He pointed this out to Martinez.

“Avenue bangers doing some set tripping?” Martinez asked.

“Not good news if they are. Was the attempted hit a shot across the bow?”

“A warning?”

“Let’s hope that’s all it is.” The last thing L.A. needed was a full fledged gang war. The Avenues were one of a half dozen gangs charged under a gang injunction. Were they making a comeback?

“Let’s go run our suspects through the system, see what pops up,” David said after they had been given descriptions of the two
Sureños.
As they strolled back to their unmarked. “Somebody’s got to have a jacket. Maybe something there will tell us who are hitters were.”

He let Martinez drive; his side was still stiff and achy. Not that he would let on to such a weakness. Martinez could be worse than Chris when it came to mothering him.

The database came up with half a dozen hits on Ronaldo Torres, AKA Lil T and Bautista Goyo, or Big G, both known associates of
Los sureños
. Both recent guests of Chino in San Bernardino county, a Level I penal institution. Graduates from one of the training programs offered to inmates, Torres was using the skills he’d learned and was driving an ice cream truck in Glassell Park. David wondered if he’d sold ice cream to Maria’s daughter. Goyo remained unemployed, though not necessarily insolvent. Most of his beefs had been drug related. Was the ice cream gig a cover to let the dealers move freely through an area?

Gangers liked to start them young. Get a homie hooked as a pre-teen and he was yours for his short, miserable life. Ice cream and crystal. Tweakers usually had a sweet tooth. Were Goyo and Lil T just distributors or did they use their own product?

Their jackets didn’t say. They’d have to track them down and let them sweat in an interview room for a while to see.

Now they just had to find the dynamic duo.

Before their rival bangers found them and finished what they’d started.

CHRIS SPENT THE day at Pharmaden, getting the servers ready for the migration to the new systems. He broke for a quick bite at a local café where he drank several cups of coffee and did his damnedest not to think about David.

He wasn’t very successful. Face it, the guy was completely and irrevocably under his skin. Detoxing was going to be as hard as what any junkie faced quitting their drug of choice. It took almost nothing to make him think of David. A voice in the next booth, a glimpse of swarthy skin and crisp, dark hair. A smoldering look from a total stranger. But even those didn’t move him and he turned away form the odd encounter that he knew would end up in someone’s bed. He didn’t want some nameless, faceless cock up his ass. He wanted David.

And he couldn’t have him.

Face it. David was out of his life, by his choice. He’d made that more than clear.

“Get over yourself,” he muttered as he paid up and slunk back into Pharmaden’s subbasement where he could bury himself in his work. Something he was very good at.

He didn’t leave the job until long after the sun had gone down in flame behind a thick bank of cloud and smog. He emerged to find his Lexus sitting on a flat tire, courtesy of a nail, or so he thought until he called AAA and they discovered the tire had been slashed.

“Tough luck that,” the tow truck driver commiserated with a grin on his lying face. “Nice truck.”

“Not for long,” Chris muttered as he handed the goon his AAA card and paid to have the ruined tire taken away for recycling.

“Getting something prettier?”

“Yeah, a tank,” Chris snapped. He roared away into the night before the smirking jerk could respond. Still seething Chris slammed into a parking spot on Hyperion and stomped into the Pit.

Ramsey looked at him in alarm, and when Chris climbed onto a barstool and planted his elbows on the bar he silently got his Ciroc martini and put it, along with a bowl of peanuts, in front of him. Chris ignored the food and dove into the drink.

Ramsey refilled it. But when he would have moved off down the bar, Chris stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You ever have one of those days?”

“All the time. Everyone does. It’s what makes the good days seem better.”

“Oh is that what it is.” Chris buried his nose in the top shelf vodka, barely appreciating it. “Give me another one.”

“Give me your keys.”

Chris handed them over. In the beginning he’d argued with Ramsey about how drunk he really was, but it was an argument he was destined to lose, so now he didn’t even try. Ramsey brought his third drink, which Chris didn’t try to inhale. He even nibbled on a few nuts.

“Is it David?” Ramsey asked quietly, for Chris’s ears only.

“What? No, it’s not David... Well, maybe it is. I don’t know anymore. The guy messes with my head, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Don’t tell me you think we’re made for each other. I swear if I hear that fucking platitude one more time, I’ll scream.”

Ramsey shrugged and busied himself wiping down the mahogany bar. “Doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what you and David think.”

“And I think people should mind their own business.”

“Fair enough.”

They let the silence settle between them as Chris’s unfocused rage slowly subsided. He grew aware of other people in the bar, some he knew. He nodded to a few guys but made no effort to join anyone. Even the hot looking guy who slid into the space beside him, brushing his hip against Chris’s, didn’t get any attention. After a while the hot guy left in search of more receptive game.

Chris got another martini. After a bit, Ramsey murmured, “How’s Des doing? Still the same?”

“Up and down,” Chris admitted. “Some days are good and I can see him getting better, then the next day...” He flipped his hand over, imitating a diving plane. “More good than bad, so that’s probably a good sign.”

“I’m glad. I went to see him at the hospital. That was rough.”

Chris was startled. He’d never thought Des and Ramsey even knew each other outside of the bar. Certainly Des had never mentioned him. Thinking about Des made him want to talk to his best friend. He pulled out his BlackBerry and checked the time before hitting speed dial. A few minutes after six. Probably getting dinner ready. He hit call.

The brrr of a ringing phone greeted him. He let it ring until voice mail kicked in. Thoughtfully he disconnected and set the BlackBerry down on the bar. He finished his martini and picked the phone up again. This time it rang several times and he expected it to go into voice mail again. Instead it fell silent.

“Hello? Des? Is that you?”

Silence. The hairs on his neck rose. The call was eerily reminiscent of the night he had called Des four months ago to similar silence. When he had gone to investigate he had found Des’s lover Kyle butchered and Des missing. That had been the beginning of Des’s nightmare that continued to this day.

What was going on?

“Des? Are you there—”

“Chris?”

Relief flooded him. He felt something loosen in him and he took a deep breath. “Des, you scared me. Were you sleeping?”

“No, I’m awake,” Des’s voice was softer than normal. “Can’t sleep. Wish I could...”

“Hey, boyfriend,” Chris dropped his own voice as if he was too forceful he might scare Des somehow. Which was silly. Hadn’t Des been scared enough in his life that nothing Chris could do would make a dent in him? “What’s cooking, man. Want me to come over? We can kvetch—”

There was only silence. Chris’s hairs stayed up. “Des. Talk to me. What’s going on, buddy?”

“Just so tired. Need to sleep. That’s all...”

“Did you take something, Des? Did you take something to help you sleep?”

“Sleep. Yes.”

Chris looked up in a panic and found Ramsey watching him. He waved the bartender over. “I need a cab, stat.”

“What—”

“It’s Des. I need to get over to his place.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Chris thought fast. No sense alarming Ramsey or hurting Des if it turned out to be a misunderstanding on his part. “Probably nothing.”

“Right.” He picked up the bar phone and punched in a number. After a short conversation he nodded and hung up. “Be here in five.”

“Thanks.”

It took a nerve wracking thirty minutes to reach Des’s Beverly Hills bungalow. When he finally stumbled out of the cab and hurried up the flagstone steps he was beginning to hyperventilate. His last phone call had gone straight to voice mail as though Des’s phone was off the hook.

He pressed the doorbell, hearing the distinctive theme to Gone With the Wind. No answer. He tried again with the same result. Then he fell to pounding on the oak door with his fist. No Des.

He pulled out his house keys, sorting through them to find the key Des had given him years ago. He threw the door open, instantly alert to anything out of place. Still no sign of Des.

“Des, hon. Where are you?”

He passed through the living room, then the dining room and kitchen. No Des. Not good. He hurried into the master bedroom Des had painstakingly turned into chic urban glitz. There was a single light on in the normally brightly lit room. The curtains were drawn giving it a claustrophobic feel.