L a Requiem (1999) (15 page)

I hung up and called a guy I know named Rusty Swetaggen at his restaurant in Venice. Rusty drove an LAPD radio car for most of his adult life, until his wife's father died and left them the restaurant. He retired from the cops the same day that the will was read, and never looked back. Dishing out fried cheese and tap beer was more fun than humping a radio car, and paid better. Rusty said, "Man, it's been forever, Elvis. Emma thought you'd died." Emma was his wife.

"Your cousin still work for the coroner?" I'd heard him talk about it, time to time.

"That's Jerry. Sure. He's still down there."

"A woman named Karen Garcia was cut two days ago."

"The one belongs to the tortilla guy? The Monsterito?"

"His daughter. I'm on the case with Robbery-Homicide, and I think they're keeping something from me."

Rusty made a little whistling sound. "Why does Robbery-Homicide have it?"

"They say it's because the tortilla guy owns a city councilman."

"But you don't think so?"

"I think everybody's keeping secrets, and I want to know what. An ME named Evangeline Lewis did the autopsy. Another report these cops gave me was doctored, so I'm thinking maybe the autopsy protocol was altered, too. Could your cousin find out about that?"

"He doesn't work down in the labs, Elvis. He's strictly front office."

"I know."

I waited, letting Rusty think about it. Six years ago he had asked me to find his daughter after she'd run away with a crack dealer who'd wanted to bankroll his business by putting Rusty's little girl in the gang-bang sex business. Without telling her. I had found his daughter and destroyed the tapes, and now his daughter was safe, and married to a nice young guy she'd met in her recovery group. They had a baby. Rusty never let me pay for a drink, never let me pay for food, and after I stopped going to his place because I was embarrassed by all the free stuff, I'd had to beg him to stop sending it to my home and office. If there was a way to help me, Rusty Swetaggen would do it.

"Jerry would have to get into the case files, maybe. Or the ME's personal files." He was thinking out loud.

"Would he do that and talk to me?"

"Who's the ME again?"

"Evangeline Lewis."

"He'll talk to you or I'll beat him to death." Rusty said that with an absolute lack of humor. "I'll give him a call, but I can't say when I'll get through to him."

"Thanks, Rusty. Call me at home."

"Elvis?"

"Yeah, Rusty."

"I still owe you."

"You don't owe me anything, Rusty. You say hi to Emma. Give my love to the kids."

"Jerry will do this for you if I have to strangle him."

"It won't go that far, Rusty. But thanks." You see what I mean?

I spent the next hour cleaning the house, then went out onto the deck to work my way through two asanas and two katas. As I worked, I thought about Rusty's need to repay something that didn't need to be repaid. Psychologists would speculate that Rusty wanted to vicariously participate in his daughter's salvation, as if he were somehow struggling to recapture the manhood he had lost by the violation of his daughter. I thought not. I knew Rusty Swetaggen, and I knew men like him. I believed that he was filled with such a terrible and powerful love for his daughter, and for me, that the great pressure of that welling love had to be relieved or it would kill him. People often die from love, and this is a secret we all keep, even from ourselves.

When I went back inside there was a message waiting. It was Rusty, telling me to meet his cousin before the day shift began at five the next morning at a place called Tara's Coffee Bar. He had left the address, and he had given directions. I knew it would be like that.

Chapter 12

I left the house at fifteen minutes after four the next morning, leaving Lucy warm in my bed.

Earlier that night, when she had come to me after work, we decided that she would live with me for the two weeks that Ben was away. We had gone down the mountain to her apartment, and brought back clothes and the personal items she would need. I watched Lucy place her clothes in my closet, and her toiletries in my bath, letting myself toy with a fantasy of permanence. I had lived alone for a long time, but sharing my house with her seemed natural and unforced, as right as if I had shared myself with her my entire life. If that's not love, it's close enough.

We ate take-out from an Italian place in Laurel Canyon, drank red wine, and listened to the swing sounds of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy on the stereo.

We made love on the living-room couch, and after that, as she traced the scars on my body in the bronze glow of candlelight, I felt a wetness on my back. When I looked, she was crying.

"Luce?" As gentle as a butterfly's kiss.

"If I lost you, I'd die."

I touched her face. "You won't lose me. Am I not the World's Greatest Detective?"

"Of course you are." I could barely hear her.

"You won't lose me, Lucille. You won't even be able to get rid of me."

She kissed me then, and we snuggled close and fell asleep.

I worked my way down the dark mountain curves under a sky that was clear and bright and empty of stars. No fire now. No heat now. The heat was waiting for later.

When I first came to Los Angeles, I was fresh out of the Army and accustomed to using the constellations to chart my passing. The L.A. skies are so bright with light that only the most brilliant stars are visible, and those are faint and murky. I used to joke that it was this absence of stars that caused so many people to lose their bearings, but back then, I thought answers were easy. Now I know better. Some of us find our way with a single light to guide us; others lose themselves even when the star field is as sharp as a neon ceiling. Ethics may not be situational, but feelings are. We learn to adjust, and, over time, the stars we use to guide ourselves come to reside within rather than without.

Man. I'm something at 4 A.M.

At four-forty I left the freeway for empty downtown streets and a pool of yellow light called Tara's Coffee Bar. Two uniformed cops sat at the counter, along with a dozen overweight, tired men who looked like they worked in the printing plant for the Times. Everyone was scarfing eggs and bacon and buttered toast, and no one seemed worried about cholesterol or calories.

The only man there wearing a suit said, "You're Cole, right?" Soft, so that no one else could hear.

"That's right. Thanks for meeting me."

Jerry Swetaggen hunched over his coffee as if it were a small fire, keeping him warm. He was a big guy like Rusty, with a pink face and ash-blond hair. He looked younger than he probably was, sort of like a bloated fourteen-year-old who'd been dressed in a hand-me-down suit. The suit looked as if it hadn't been pressed in weeks, but maybe he'd been up most of the night.

"Did you get the Garcia file?"

He glanced at the two cops. Nervous. "I could lose my ass for this. You tell Rusty. You guys owe me big for this."

"Sure. Coffee's on me." You'd think I was asking for government secrets.

"You got no idea. Oh, man, you don't even come close to having an idea."

"So far, the only idea I'm getting is that I could've slept in. You get me a copy of the Garcia file?"

"I couldn't get the file, but I got what you want, all right." Jerry's hand floated to his lapel as if something lived up under the rumpled jacket and he wanted to let it out. He glanced at the cops again. Their backs were made broader by the Kevlar vests they wore under their shirts. "Not in here. Get the coffee, and let's walk."

"What's the big deal? What's up with Karen Garcia that has everybody so weird?"

"Get the coffee."

I put two dollars on the table and followed him out. A warm breeze had come up, pinging us with tiny bits of grit.

"I didn't get a copy for you, but I read it."

"Reading it won't help. I wanted to compare it with another copy I have."

"You already got a copy? Then why'd I have to risk my ass?"

"The copy I got might have been doctored. Maybe something was left out, and I want to know what. Might just be a little thing, but I don't like it that somebody's jerking me around."

Now he was disappointed. "Well, Jesus. You want numbers? You want charts and graphs? I can't remember all the shit in Lewis's report."

"What I want is to know if there was anything about her murder that the cops would want to hide."

Jerry Swetaggen's eyebrows arched in surprise. "You don't know?"

"Know what?"

"I figured you were already on to this, coming after Garcia. Rusty owes me, man. You owe me, too."

"You've said that. What do we owe you for?"

"The skin section identified fourteen separate particulates at the entry wound. They're running a spec analysis now -- it takes forty-eight hours to cook through the process -- so Dr. Lewis won't have the results until tomorrow. But everybody already knows they're gonna find the bleach."

"The bleach?" Like I was supposed to know what that meant.

"The plastic gives them that. It's always on the plastic."

I stared at him. "White plastic."

"Yeah."

"They found white plastic in her wound." There was no mention of plastic particulates in the autopsy report I'd read. No mention of bleach.

"The plastic comes from a bleach bottle that the shooter used as a makeshift silencer. They'll probably find adhesive from duct tape on it, too."

"How do you know what they're going to find?"

Jerry started for the lapel again, but the two uniformed cops came out. He pretended to brush at something, turning away.

"They don't even know we're alive, Jerry."

"Hey, it's not your ass on the line."

The shorter cop shook himself to settle his gear, then the two of them walked up the street away from us. Off to fight crime.

When the cops were well down the street, Jerry brought out a sheet of paper that had been folded in thirds. "You want to know what they're hiding, Cole? You want to know why it's so big?"

He shook open the page and held it out like he was about to blow my socks off. He did.

"Karen Garcia is the fifth vie murdered this way in the past nineteen months."

I looked at the paper. Five names had been typed there, along with a brief description of each. The fifth was Karen Garcia. Five names, five dates.

I said, "Five?"

"That's right. All done with a .22 in the head, all showing the white plastic and bleach and sometimes little bits of duct tape. These dates here are the dates of death." Jerry smacked his hands together as if we were back East someplace where the temperature was in the thirties, instead of here in the eighties. "I couldn't sneak out the report because they're kept together in the Special Files section, but I copied the names and this other stuff. I thought that's what you'd want."

"What's the Special Files section?"

"Whenever the cops want the MEs to keep the lid on something, that's where they seal the files. You can only get in there by special order."

I stared at the names. Five murders, not one murder. Julio Munoz, Walter Semple, Vivian Trainor, Davis Keech, and Karen Garcia.

"You're sure about this, Jerry? This isn't bogus?"

"Fuckin'-A, I'm sure."

"That's why Robbery-Homicide has the case. That's why they came down so fast."

"Sure. They've had a Task Force on this thing for over a year."

"Is there any way I can get a copy of the file?"

"Hell, no. I just told you."

"Can I get in to read the reports?"

He showed me his palms and backed away. "No way, man. And I don't care how much Rusty threatens. Anybody finds out I've said this much, it's my ass. I'm out of it."

I watched him walking away, and called to stop him.

"Jerry."

"What?"

Something with hundreds of sticky feet crawled along my spine.

"Are the five vies connected?"

Jerry Swetaggen smiled, and now his smile was scared. The smirk was gone, replaced by something fearful. "No, man. The cops say they're random. Totally unconnected."

I nodded.

Jerry Swetaggen disappeared into the murky light that precedes dawn. I put the sheet in my pocket, then took it out and looked at the names again.

"The cops were keeping secrets, all right."

I guess I just needed to hear a human voice, and even my own would do.

I put away the sheet, then tried to figure out what to do. The sheer size of it was as impossible to grasp as it is to put your arms around the Goodyear blimp. This explained why the FBI were involved, and why the police didn't want me around. If the cops were keeping their Task Force secret, they probably had good reasons, but Frank Garcia would still ask what the police were doing about his daughter's murder, and I would still have to answer. I didn't want to tell him that everything was fine if it wasn't. If I told him what Jerry Swetaggen had just told me, nothing would be secret anymore, and that might hurt the police efforts to nail the shooter. On the other hand, Krantz had kept the truth from me, so I didn't know what they had, or where they were in the investigation. I could take their efforts on faith, but Frank Garcia wasn't looking for faith.