Riptide (30 page)

“I’m not exactly a civilian, Roy. I’m a police consultant. I’ve been to crime scenes. I know how to keep out of your way.”

“You’ll just ID him, then stand back and let me handle it?”

She raised her hand as if swearing an oath. “Promise.”

He gave her a sour look. “How come I don’t believe you?”

***

“You’re very quiet,” Draper said.

She turned to him. He was driving south along the beach, the westering sun shooting orange spears through the passenger window. “Just thinking.”

“About Richard? The two of you must have been pretty close.”

“We were. Before...” She didn’t have to say more.

“You’re sure you can’t provide a better description of what he was wearing?”

“I didn’t pay much attention to his clothes. Loose shirt, faded color. Casual pants. They could have been jeans.”

“Okay.”

“You still think I’m wrong about the murders, don’t you?”

“Probably. It’s easy to get carried away when you’re under strain.”

“I haven’t been—” She stopped. Of course she had been under strain. The earthquake, the skeletons, the diary, Richard’s disappearance, Sirk’s revelation about her father... “I’m not imagining things,” she said.

“We’ll see.”

He parked within a short walk of Venice Pier. They trekked onto the sand, toward the sad scatter of trash-bag tents. The tent city was smaller than it had been this morning. Many of the inhabitants must be on the streets or the boardwalk, cadging spare change, and they’d taken their possessions—even the makeshift tents—with them.

But the man with the port-wine stain was still there. She saw him standing in a huddled group of men who watched their approach with hostile eyes.

“That’s him,” she said. “With the birthmark.”

“All right. You remember our agreement, right? You stand back and let me handle it.”

“Of course.”

“Stay right here.” He traced a line in the sand with the toe of his shoe. “Don’t cross this line.”

She looked at him and saw him grinning. His little joke.

Draper strode into the camp with an easy gait, his posture authoritative but unthreatening, his sport jacket flapping in the sea breeze. “Hey, buddy. Need to talk to you for a second.”

The others in the circle backed off but stayed near enough to take in the show.

“I ain’t done nothing,” the man with the birthmark said.

“Didn’t say you had.”

The man looked past Draper, at Jennifer. She knew he recognized her. “What’s
she
doing here? She a cop, too?”

Draper hadn’t identified himself as a cop, but the guy seemed to know it intuitively.

“She’s looking for her brother, and so am I. You told her you knew where he’s hanging.”

“Bitch is crazy. Jerking your chain.”

Draper was close to him now, and smiling. “What’s your name?”

“Eddie.”

“You know what I think, Eddie? I think
you’re
the one jerking my chain.” His hand shot out and grabbed Eddie’s left arm, wrenching it behind his back. “That’s what I think,” Draper added conversationally.

Jennifer’s heart sped up. She remembered the excess force complaints in Draper’s file.

“Shit, man, lemme go.”

“Talk to me straight.” Draper twisted harder. “Where’s her brother?”

“Fuck, that hurts, let
go
!”

“I’ll let go when you talk to me.”

Eddie waved his free arm in surrender. “Okay, okay...ease up, and I’ll tell you.”

Draper complied, but only a little. “Talk.”

“I seen him flopping at the old hotel by the boardwalk. You know the one they red-tagged ’cause of the quake? It’s, what do you call it, evacuated.”

“He’s in there?”

“I seen him go in.”

“When?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“How’d he get in if the hotel is closed up?”

“Anyone can get into that shit hole. You know that.”

“Just tell me how.”

“Side window. Half the windows in that place don’t even close, and the other half don’t open. He got in through one of the open ones. I seen him crawling through.”

Draper still hadn’t released his hold on Eddie’s arm. “You wouldn’t be shitting me?”

“No way, I swear.”

“Because I don’t like having my time wasted by bullshit. If your info doesn’t pan out, I’ll be pissed.”

“I can’t swear he’s still there, but that’s where he was yesterday.”

“And you just happened to notice him when he went through the window? It made a big impression on you? Come on, that’s a lot of crap.”

Eddie swallowed. Even from a distance Jennifer could see the heavy jerk of his Adam’s apple. “Okay, I was thinking—thinking I might roll him, you know? He had good shoes. Better’n mine.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“ ’Cause he gave off this vibe. This crazy vibe. You know what I’m saying? Like he’s a nut case. And crazy people, they ain’t worth the trouble.”

Draper let him go. Eddie staggered back, rubbing his arm.

“That wasn’t cool, man. I could make a call, get you in trouble for pulling shit like that.”

“Sure you could. Maybe you can use some of
these
guys as witnesses.” Draper’s arm swept the ragged crowd of onlookers. “Their testimony will be real credible, won’t it? Oh, I’m in some deep shit now.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Draper smiled. “Fuck me.”

He walked back to Jennifer, looking not at all perturbed, as if this were literally just another day at the beach. He took her by the shoulder, leading her away. After a moment she pulled free.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I never pictured you doing anything like that.”

“I worked patrol for ten years, Jen. I’m not a choirboy.” He read her eyes and added, “I wouldn’t have really hurt him. Not in any serious way.”

“It looked like you were ready to break his arm.”

“Not even close. It’s a standard maneuver. Well within departmental policy. They teach it at the academy.”

“To subdue a violent suspect. That man wasn’t violent.”

“It’s up to the officer’s discretion.”

“It was unnecessary. You could have gotten him to talk without hurting him.”

“Think so? Did he talk to
you
this morning?”

She couldn’t argue with that.

They climbed back into the car. Draper called the station and learned that Casey was out cruising, then used the radio to ask the RTO to hail 14-l-50 and request him to switch to tactical frequency five. Casey’s voice came on. “Go, fifty.”

Draper brought him up to speed. “It’s the Fortezza,” he concluded.

Casey grunted. “Where else?”

Jennifer didn’t have to ask what he meant. The Fortezza had a reputation, and it wasn’t good.

The hotel was among Venice’s oldest buildings, erected in 1905 in time for Abbot Kinney’s gala celebration of his new city on the Fourth of July. It had been elegant then, a four-story Italianate tower, home to visiting opera divas and yachtsmen.

Today it was a faded relic, a hostel and fifth-rate tourist trap periodically written up for health violations. The mattresses crawled with bedbugs. The drawers were lined with roaches. Vagrants gathered in the alley behind the building to drink and curse long into the night. Prostitutes rented rooms by the hour.

The earthquake had caused structural damage. The hotel had been condemned and vacated. Only squatters roosted there. Richard could be one of them.

If he was there now, he would soon be in custody.

thirty-one

Draper pulled alongside the hotel at 5:45 as the sun brushed the horizon.

“You think he’ll still be here?” Jennifer asked him as he double-parked, blocking in an SUV at the curb.

“When these guys find a spot that’s safe, they tend to stick around. And if he’s mainly nocturnal, there’s a good chance he’ll be here during daylight hours.”

“If he’s inside, he may see the patrol cars.” Draper’s car was unmarked, but the cruisers would stand out.

“Cops aren’t exactly a rare phenomenon in this neighborhood. There are police cars going up and down this street all day. By the time he realizes we’re entering his building, he’ll be stuck.”

“If he’s cornered, he may fight.”

“We can handle him.”

“Don’t let him get hurt.”

“I’ll do everything I can.”

She thought of how he’d roughed up the man on the beach. She said nothing. .

A black-and-white rolled to a stop beside them. Casey stepped out as two more squad cars rounded the corner. None of them used lights and siren. They weren't advertising their arrival.

She heard Casey report to dispatch. “Fourteen-L-fifty to Control One, show us code six at Sunset and Speedway.”

Draper briefed him, both men looking away from the hotel to avoid betraying any interest in it.

“It’s a big building,” Casey said. “And the power’s off. It’ll be dark inside.”

“So?”

“So it’s a tricky business. We might be better off with another couple units.”

“That’ll just raise a red flag. We’re already drawing a crowd.”

He nodded toward the spectators congregating outside the coffee shop across the street. More people were drifting down from the boardwalk.

“So what’s your plan?” Casey asked. “Crash the hotel and do a room-to-room search?”

Draper fingered the service Beretta in the shoulder holster under his sport coat. “You got a better one? If we call out SWAT, there’ll be time for him to book.”

“Okay, but I’m calling the shots inside.”

“Understood.”

“And I’ll have to station two officers outside to watch the front and rear exits. That means just four of us to search the interior.”

“Five of us,” Jennifer said. “I’m going too.”

Casey turned to her. “Like hell you are.”

“I may need to talk to him. If he tries to resist, I may be able to talk him down.”

“You think this is a movie? In real life we don’t bring in the suspect’s sister to get through to him. You’re staying here. End of discussion.”

He motioned to one of the patrolmen, a lanky kid with P2 stripes.

“Sullivan. You and Hanes are posted outside. One in front, one in back. Watch the exits. Anybody tries getting out through a window, grab him. We’ll give you periodic updates on tac five. Otherwise we’ll stay off the air as much as possible, and you do the same. And keep an eye on Miss Silence here. She is
not
to enter the hotel.”

Jennifer bristled. “You don’t need to treat me like a child.”

Casey ignored her. “Cox, Jorgensen, we’re going in.”

Sullivan sent his partner around to the rear and took up a position where he could watch the lobby door. Casey and Draper led the other two patrol officers up the steps.

“We don’t know what this mope is carrying,” Casey said to the uniforms. “If he resists, light him up.” He indicated the taser carried by one of the men, who nodded.

“Lot of trouble just to roust a bum,” one of the cops groused.

Jennifer felt a flash of anger that anyone would refer to Richard that way. Then she remembered that he was something much worse.

Casey produced a set of keys, one of which unlocked the hotel’s front door. It wasn’t unusual for cops to have master keys to buildings in a high-crime district.

“Watch your six,” Casey said.

The men entered, the door closing behind them. Jennifer moved close to Sullivan, listening to updates on the tactical frequency. In the ground-floor windows she saw movement. The police were checking one room at a time.

Casey’s voice crackled over Sullivan’s radio. “First floor clear. Heading up.”

She surveyed the scene. Maura and other civic boosters might talk about Venice’s comeback, but there was no sign of it here. Shopping-card people and zoned-out addicts wandered the street and adjacent alleys, scrounging in trash cans. Rap music throbbed from the coffee shop in a steady stream of expletives. Next door to the café was a tattoo parlor, and beyond it was an S & M shop, its storefront windows displaying nude mannequins in bondage poses. An abandoned movie theater completed the row of buildings, the letters on its marquee spelling out Goodbye Cruel World.

The concrete promenade called Ocean Front Walk was bustling with even more activity than usual for a warm Friday evening. The overflow from the boardwalk was swelling the crowd of lookie-loos. She wished no one were watching. She didn’t want Richard’s arrest to be a public spectacle. But of course everything in his life would soon be public knowledge, fodder for the 24-hour news channels and the tabloids.