Playing the Game (14 page)

Although the majority of Westwood is a pleasant, kempt area, a section of it leaves a lot to be desired to say the least. One block had become run down and ramshackle, and is just as much home to drug dealers and prostitutes as it is to the law-abiding section of its community.

Approaching the address we had been given for Barnes’ sister, I shook my head at how down-at-heel this area had actually become.

‘Careful man’, Charlie advised. ‘Watch your back man, you never know’. If there was one thing today had taught us, it was to expect the unexpected. We found Barnes’ address in the far corner of the shitty part of Westwood. No surprise there; I’d guessed as much. Striding purposefully towards the front door, I let Charlie take the lead.

After several moments, a grossly overweight woman, who I suspect was nearly fifty but looked closer to sixty, answered the door. ‘What the fuck you want?’ she demanded, revealing a hideously toothless expression. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

The greeting put our backs up immediately. I never expect politeness as a given, but a little common courtesy doesn’t go amiss.  We both flashed our badges to identify ourselves. ‘Is Dave Barnes at this address?’ Charlie questioned as we barged past her into a dank and dark front room. ‘We need to speak to him urgently’

‘He’s in bed is where he’s at’, at least she looked like being a little more co-operative now she knew we were PD.

‘Go get him’, he said ominously.

We waited patiently for Barnes to compose himself which took a few minutes. Still, when he appeared, he looked a mess; Stained white vest, jogging pants and nursing what looked like the hangover from hell. Five or six days of greyish stubble and tangled, matted hair aged him almost as much as his sister and he walked slowly, yet with little purpose. The stench of stale whisky hung in the air, which I figured was pretty much a permanent odour in the house. Christ, even if he confirmed what we wanted him to confirm, could we take his word for it?

‘Dave Barnes?’ I asked, to which he merely nodded as he sat down. ‘I’m Detective Patton, this is Detective Holland’, I gestured to Charlie, getting the formalities out of the way. ‘We have some questions regarding your time at San Quentin, specifically the time you spent guarding the women’s wing’.

‘I maybe an alcoholic, Detectives, but even I cannot forget my time at San Quentin’, he acknowledged. ‘No matter how much I drink’, he added, almost an afterthought, maybe trying to justify his addiction to us. ‘Saw some sights in there, I can tell you’.

Although I could see what I was saying was taking a few seconds to sink in, he seemed cohesive enough, despite his appearance.

‘Do you remember an inmate called Sarah Caldwell?’ I cut straight to the chase. ‘She would have been there around the time you lost your job?’

His response was immediate. ‘Yeah, I remember her’, he nodded. ‘She was in there for a triple homicide or something’.

‘You sure she was there?’ Charlie asked.

‘Sure I’m sure’, Barnes answered. ‘She was there the entire nine or ten months I was posted on her wing. Pretty easy gig, I’ll tell you that. About a week before I got fired, she disappeared though. No idea where she went, but she sure as shit wasn’t at San Quentin anymore’.

‘How do we know your telling us the truth?’ Although we were hearing what we needed to hear, I couldn’t help but remain sceptical. ‘You need to convince us’.

‘Wait there Detectives’, he seemed cautious. Barnes shuffled off to another room.

Just as I was about to lose patience with him and drag him back into the front room, he reappeared, holding a large box. ‘Be in here somewhere’, he mumbled. Looking up at us as he rifled through the contents, he told us that the box contained all his personal effects from the day he was fired, and he hadn’t opened it since the day he left San Quentin for the final time.

‘Ah I knew I still had it here somewhere.’ he informed us, ‘I was supposed to have submitted this during my final week there. I realised I’d got it when I was packing my shit up was hardly going to submit it after they’d fired me. The bastards.’ He gestured to me to take the piece of paper he had found.

What I had in my hand was as close to confirmation that Sarah Caldwell was indeed a former inmate of San Quentin as we were going to get. It was an official list of all prisoners of Wing D, about ten months ago. On the list was prisoner number 188571; Sarah Caldwell.

Giving the sheet of paper to Charlie, I turned back to Dave Barnes. ‘Listen’, I said. ‘We need a description of her, right now. Can you remember what she looks like?’

Barnes smiled, and pouring a drink with one shaky hand, he reached back into the box with the other. ‘I can do better than that’, he croaked. ‘I’ve also got her photograph’.

I took it off him immediately and studied it intently. Without a doubt I could see the resemblance to Andrew Caldwell. She was actually kind of pretty, but her eyes were stone cold dead. I wondered for a moment what had made her that way, if there was something that triggered it; that started her along the path she had chosen for herself.

I noticed Barnes seemed a little distracted, as if he were trying to place a name or a face. I followed his line of vision to a small television that had been playing with no sound since we had arrived. ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’ I quizzed.

Eventually, having searched his somewhat diluted memory bank for what seemed like an eternity, he gave us his reply. ‘It may be nothing’, he almost whispered, ‘but the week before I was sacked, the
day
before Sarah Caldwell disappeared from San Quentin, I was called up to see Governor Tassiker.’

‘Your point being?’ Charlie barked.

‘I saw him shake hands with a man leaving his office, just as I arrived. I hadn’t seen him before but I definitely heard the man thank Tassiker for a favour. He even said something alone the lines of ‘one less to worry about’, or something.

I didn’t have a clue what Barnes was on about, and even less of an idea if it was relevant or not, but decided to humour him. After all, we’d gotten more out of Barnes than we could have hoped for. ‘And who was this guy who met Governor Tassiker then?’

‘I don’t know’, Barnes shook his head and pointed at the television. ‘But I’m certain that’s him’.

I turned to look at the TV again, which was showing a news report on a man in a sharp suit and who had a charismatic smile that he flashed at the cameras three times in almost as many seconds. It was someone who was instantly recognisable, one of LA’s most prominent individuals. It was District Attorney, Paul McCrane.

39

            After we left Barnes, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the last thing he had told us was vitally important. We now knew a couple of things; that Sarah Caldwell had indeed been an inmate at San Quentin, and that somehow she had been released and all trace of her having been there had been erased. That, to me, seemed like a major operation and not something that could just happen overnight. Someone must have wanted Caldwell out of there for some reason and that someone must have yielded considerable power. Like a District Attorney perhaps?

            Upon hearing we had the confirmation from Barnes, the Captain pondered his next move. He was backing us to the hilt. He was sending Shawn Axon down to San Quentin to speak with Governor Tassiker. ‘Axon’s good,’ he reassured us. ‘It’s gonna take him a while to get down there, but he’ll be heading to the airport shortly. If there’s anything to uncover down there, he’ll find it’.

            ‘Tassiker must have known’, I agreed. ‘It’s here in black and white, Caldwell was definitely there’. I also ran the theory past him that Paul McCrane had been seen with Tassiker a day before Caldwell had disappeared.

            ‘Could be co-incidental’, he mused. ‘Still, we have to tread carefully here Patton’. McCrane’s reputation preceded him; he was not someone to mess with. ‘Are we saying that we think McCrane had something to do with freeing Caldwell?’ he asked, ‘Just so we’re clear?’

            ‘Listen Captain’, I answered. ‘The paper we have from Barnes is hard evidence. It’s fact. That some alcoholic pisshead thinks he saw someone meeting with Tassiker several months ago; well that’s an entirely different proposition’, I continued. ‘We’re going to need a lot more than that, a lot more. Having said that, it can’t hurt to look into it, can it? It’s the best we’ve got!’

            ‘If you’re right, and I say
if
with extreme caution’, Williams retorted, ‘then we could start to piss on some big boys’ bonfires here Patton’, Williams cautioned. ‘You ready for that?’

            ‘Listen Captain’, I affirmed. ‘All that matters to me at the moment is stopping The Chemist. Stopping Sarah Caldwell’. I knew I spoke for Charlie too.

            ‘OK then. Listen, I’ll co-ordinate with Axon on this end with regard to Tassiker. You never know, he
might
confirm McCrane was there, although I suspect that even if he was, Tassiker won’t give us that information that easily. You guys better get yourself to 14
^th
. Swats are in position. I’ve circulated your description of Caldwell. Something tells me she’ll have changed her appearance if she plans on being there though’, he noted. I agreed with him there.

            With Charlie driving, we made it to 14
^th
with time to spare. It’s hard to describe the feeling of not knowing whether or not you are being watched. We had no way of knowing for sure, but it was a feeling that crept up on me again as we ditched the car and headed for the crowded station on 14
^th
in West Los Angeles.

40

Last week

            Paul Britland-Jones’ recent feeling of events spiralling out of control was one that he woke with the morning after his meeting with Conrad Conway, not that he’d had much sleep anyway.  He’d awoken from a fitful dream that he forgot as soon as he opened his eyes at just after six o’ clock, and spent the rest of the morning deliberating as to whether or not he should keep his midday appointment with the Senator.

            Conway had made it quite clear the previous night that he did not give in to blackmail, and had made it even clearer that if his dalliances with prostitutes, or indeed anything remotely derogatory, was made public, then that was the last news story he would ever break. Britland-Jones had believed him. He’d been naïve to expect anything less. Still, desperate times called for desperate measures, and the journalistic instinct within him couldn’t help but be intrigued with what Conway suggested. The Senator had then made him a curious offer. Once McCrane and Burr were disgraced and out of the picture, he would pay Britland-Jones the fifty grand he wanted. ‘Call it an incentive for doing what I need you to do’, he commanded. Arranging to meet in an underground car park in La Cienega, just outside of Ladera Heights, the Senator had left last night’s meeting with a busy night in prospect.

            For his part, Conway had endured an equally restless night. Leaving The Bully, he’d mused how fortunate the unsuspecting journalist had been. If the events of that evening had not unfolded the way they had, if Hague had not aroused suspicion regarding Burr and McCrane, if Conway himself hadn’t quickly manipulated Britland-Jones’ pathetic blackmail attempt to his own ends; then someone this morning would have been reporting that the body of a young Englishman had been found floating face down in the water at Long Beach pier. Nothing would have been traced back to Conway himself. When pressed, he could always find an alibi for a certain place or a certain time; that had never been a problem. And if The Bully’s threat that if any harm should come to him, someone else would leak the story? To hell with that! He’d just claim it was a vicious smear campaign by one of his rivals and that any evidence they had was circumstantial. His smooth tongue would steer round any sordid details and that would be that. It was a major hassle that he was keen to avoid, but if that had been the only option left open to him then he would have dealt with it regardless.

            Conway had not driven straight home but to a row of small lockups in Korea town. It was the perfect place, maybe one of the only places in LA where he could go about any business unrecognised. The residents of Korea town didn’t give a shit who he was and that suited him just fine.

            Many years ago, just as he was starting to climb the political ladder, his mentor, Burton Wheeler, a sixty-four year old ex-politician in LA who had championed him from the beginning, had given him a sage piece of advice.

            ‘Conrad’, he’d warned. ‘If I can offer you one thing, I offer you this’. Conway, young and eager to learn, had leaned closer, wanting to glean anything he could learn from this old man. ‘Find somewhere secret. Somewhere that no-one knows about. Somewhere that only you know is there. Keep records, and by records I mean dirt, on everybody you work with; friends, enemies, even family if you have to. You never know when a friend will become an enemy and vice versa. You never know when something insignificant, something trivial, will become important. Important enough to save your career, maybe even important enough to save your life’.

            Wheeler had passed away suddenly, a mere four days later. Deeply upset at the time, Conway had attended his cremation with his words of warning still echoing in his ears.

41

            Charlie and I stood on 14
^th
awaiting the arrival of the train thought we were required to board. We’d had no confirmation from The Chemist that we were on the right track with this, that wasn’t her style though was it? For all I knew, we had completely misread the last instruction and were not even close to where we needed to be. I hoped for everyone’s sake that we were right.

            It was just building up to rush hour; it wouldn’t be quite there for another hour or so, but it was late enough in the day for the station to be fairly crowded; people leaving work early, students with free periods at the end of their day and just general commuters, free for the day going about their various activities. Between us, we cased each individual, just in case Sarah Caldwell was here, watching us. I didn’t think she was, but I couldn’t say for sure. The photo that Barnes had given us was about as recent as we could hope for, but I was certain that she would have drastically altered her appearance by now. I did recognise one or two undercover officers that Williams had also placed at the scene; one dressed as a respectable business man in a suit complete with financial paper and briefcase, one as an everyday shopper, laden with bags which I knew would be dropped in an instant should anything happen here that required backup.