Suicide Hill (35 page)

The last of the mechanics were leaving when they pulled up across the street from Likable Louie's One-Stop Pit Stop. Lloyd let them finish locking up and gave them time to get down to Sunset, then took a crowbar from the trunk, ran over and pried the garage door open. Flicking on the overhead lights, the first thing he saw was low-rider perfection.

It was a mint-condition '54 Chevy ragger, candy-apple sapphire blue, canary yellow top, continental kit, tuck-and-roll upholstery. Lloyd checked the dashboard and grinned. The key was in the ignition.

“Bonaroo, man! Fine as fucking wine!”

Lloyd turned around and saw Joe stroking the Chevy's rear fender skirts. Anne Vanderlinden stood behind him, smoking a cigarette and eyeing a tool bin loaded with portable TVs. Tapping Joe's shoulder, Lloyd said, “Are you legit with the greaser act, or are you just trying to impress me?”

Joe started polishing the car with his sleeve. “I don't know. I
righteously
don't know.”

“What
do
you know?”

“That I righteously know what I don't want to be. Listen, I got a question.”

“Shoot, but nothing about what's going down. All you need to know is get the hell out. There's loose ends all over the place.”

Joe fingered the Chevy's pinstriping. “Why'd Rice kill himself at Suicide Hill? What was he thinking of?”

Lloyd shrugged. “I don't know.”

Anne was by the tool bin, fiddling with the dials of the TV sets. Joe could tell that she was dope-itchy, looking for something to do with her hands. Moving his eyes back and forth between his maybe girlfriend and his guardian angel, he said, “Hopkins, what's with that place? I mean, you're a cop, you must have heard the stories. It started out with this dude Fritz Hill, right? Back in the forties? He was a righteous hardball and the Hill was named after him?”

Lloyd looked out at the street, getting nervous because he was a civilian now, with no official sanctions for breaking and entering. “I think most of the story is bullshit,” he said. “What I've heard is that back in the fifties and sixties there was an old snitch who used to hang out by the Sepulveda Wash. He pretended to be a religious loony, so the local cops and the punks who partied there would think he was harmless. He ratted off shitloads of gangsters to the juvie dicks downtown, and he got a snitch jacket and got snuffed. He was a German guy, and his name was Fritz something. What's the matter, homeboy? You look sad.”

“Not sad,” Joe said. “Relieved, maybe.”

“The keys are in the ignition. Can you drive a stick?”

“Can niggers dance?”

“Only to soul music. Grab some of those TVs and split.”

Joe loaded the trunk and backseat with portable Sonys. Anne stood and watched, chain-smoking and shivering. When the Chevy was filled to capacity, he led her over to the passenger's-side door and lovingly eased her in, then returned to Lloyd. Sticking out his hand jailhouse style, he said, “Thanks. And tell Louie I'll pay him off someday.”

Lloyd corrected the shake in mid-grasp. “My pleasure. And don't worry about Louie, he owes me. Where are you going?”

“I don't know.”

Lloyd smiled and said, “Go there fast,” then dropped Joe's hand and watched him walk to his chariot. The strangest armed robber of all time hit the gas with a flourish and crunched the Chevy's gears backing out of the garage, sideswiping parked cars as he headed south on Tomahawk Street. Lloyd turned off the light and shut the door, brushing B&E splinters from his hands. When he got to his Matador, he had a clear view of Sunset. The Chevy was fishtailing it eastbound, and Anne Atwater Vanderlinden was standing under a streetlamp, dancing with her thumb out.

Tango time.

Lloyd took an inventory of his person, punching the seat when he saw that he had forgotten both his newly resurrected .45 and his standard .38 snub nose. The only piece in the car was the .12 gauge mounted to the dash, and it was too obtrusive—overkill all the way. He had to go to the house first and grab a weapon; to show up unarmed for the dance would be suicidal.

He drove home slowly, the amphetamine keeping him hyper-alert, fear of the confrontation making him dawdle in the slow lane. Turning onto his block, he began composing epitaphs for himself and Jesus Fred. Then he saw the moving van in his driveway, its headlights illuminating Janice's Persian carpet, rolled up against the side door. Antiques were arranged on the lawn like welcome beacons, along with piles of Penny's books.

Mine.

Home.

Yes.

Lloyd gasped and punched the accelerator. The homecoming dissolved like a mirage, and new bursts of death prose kept it pushed down to where it couldn't maim him; couldn't destroy his resolve. Then, with miles of obituaries behind him, he pulled up in front of Captain Frederick T. Gaffaney's house and let it hurt, letting his old hot-dog persona take over from there.

Mine.

Home.

Him or me.

Lloyd grabbed the shotgun and flipped off the safety, then .pumped in a shell and walked over to the house. The downstairs was dark, but dim lights glowed from behind curtained .windows on the second floor. Giving the door handle a test jiggle, Lloyd felt it click and give. He pushed the door open and moved inside.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke and whiskey filled the living room. Lloyd padded forward in the darkness, the odor getting stronger as a staircase came into shadowy view. Tip-toeing up it, he heard coughing, and when he got to the second-floor landing, he saw diffused light glinting off empty liquor bottles strewn across the hallway. Holding the Ithaca at port arms, he pressed himself to the wall back first and scissor-walked toward the light source.

It was a bathroom, giving off a different odor—that of charred paper. Stepping in, Lloyd saw that the smell emanated from the soggy mounds of blackened folders that filled the bathtub. Poking the barrel of his shotgun at the top of the pile, a layer of soot crumbled, and he was able to pick out the stenciled words:
Confidential-Need to Know Basis.
A cross and flag logo was imprinted below it.

A sudden burst of coughing forced Lloyd to wheel and aim. Seeing nothing but the bathroom walls, he traced the racking sound down the hall to a half-open door with total dark behind it. He raised his right foot to kick; the door flew open and harsh light blinded him. He threw the Ithaca up into firing position, and when his vision cleared, he saw that he was nuzzle to muzzle with Fred Gaffaney and a cocked magnum.

“Freeze, asshole.”

Lloyd didn't recognize the voice, and could hardly recognize the man it belonged to. This was a high-ranking witch-hunter of booze breath, slept-in clothes and frazzled nerve ends; a born-again with a three-day beard and a shaky finger on a rigger at half pull. A doomsday apparition.

“Freeze, asshole.”

The second warning came across as hideous self-parody. Lloyd lowered his shotgun, and Gaffaney eased down the hammer of the .357. The two weapons fell to rest at their bearers' sides simultaneously, and Lloyd said, “What are we going to do about this, Captain?”

Stepping back into the study, Gaffaney waved his gun at the framed L.A.P.D. group shots on the walls. “I'm not a captain anymore, Sergeant,” he said, his voice regaining its authority. “I resigned this morning. You outrank me. I did it to make it easy for you.”

Lloyd propped the Ithaca up against the doorjamb, keeping it within grabbing range. “I'm not a sergeant anymore. I asked to top out my twenty, but they'll never go for it. We're both civilians. That make it easier for
you
?”

Gaffaney looked at a picture of his wife pinning lieutenant's bars to his collar. “My resignation was accepted, yours was shelved. Braverton told me this afternoon. He wants you around. He wants you around because he loves you.”

Lloyd kept his eyes on the magnum that Gaffaney dangled by a finger. “Captain, we're both down the—”

“Don't call me that, goddamn you!”

“We're both down the river! We killed men in cold blood, and the Department has got the fix in on yours, and you've got the fix in on mine, and all I want to do is seal the jackets on both deals and go home to my family. That's as easy as I can make it.”

Gaffaney's raw-nerved features went lax; his voice went blank. “You didn't come to arrest me?”

The evidence room charade clicked in as a deliberate big wrong move. Lloyd let his fingers brush the .12 gauge. “I thought I could do it, but I can't. How about it? Your indictment for mine, then I get out of here before something crazy happens.”

Gaffaney started shaking his head. His arms shook involuntarily, as if his entire body were trying to shout his denial. The .357 dropped to the floor just as he found his voice. “No. No. No. No. No, no, no, no—”

Lloyd made a grab for the magnum. He got it in his hands before Gaffaney could make a move, and had the cylinder emptied just as the string of no's trailed into a weirdly lucid monotone. “ … I didn't come this far for you to betray me.”

Lloyd slipped the shells into his pocket and tossed the revolver back on the floor, then picked up the Ithaca and ejected the round in the chamber. When the carpet was littered with neutralized weaponry, he said, “Why me?”

The witch-hunter's monotone took on resonance. “Because I was good, but you're the best. Because you were a punk civilian when you killed that man in Watts, while I was a high-ranking police officer when I committed murder. Because the Department will never let me be prosecuted, because justice in this affair must be total.” Gaffaney paused, then said, “Because I love you.”

Lloyd moved backward until he bumped the wall. “You're insane if you think I'm going to kill you. I'd let you hang me for Richard Beller before I'd do that.”

With a ghastly smile as segue, Fred Gaffaney said, “We both learned the gift of sacrifice late, Lloyd. That happens with selfish men like ourselves. I'm only sorry that our sacrifices have to conflict. Now tell me in light of this if I'm insane:

“From the tap on your phone I surmised that you wanted to frame a dead man for Joe Garcia's part in the robberies and killings. I held on to the information. Then this afternoon, when I read the paper and saw what you had gotten away with, I sent Sergeants Collins and Lohmann to check up on Klein. He was involved in the filming of pornographic movies on the dates of the three robberies, in full view of a dozen witnesses. He cannot be connected in any way to Luis Calde ron, and a friend of mine in S.I.D. said that he died of knife wounds. He has in his possession a switchblade whose edges perfectly match a biopsied section of Klein's abdomen. The handle has Joe Garcia's thumbprint on it.”

“No,” Lloyd said in his own doomsday drone. “No, no, no, no, no.”

Gaffaney said, “Yes,” and started ticking off points. “Klein's alibi witnesses won't come forth, for fear of their involvement in porno coming to light, but questioning the Pico-Westholme eyewitnesses with Klein's and Joe Garcia's mugshots should get some interesting feedback, and Calderon could never get by a persistent grand jury. Collins and Lohmann have Duane Rice's .45, taken from the car he was in when they apprehended him. That will contradict Braverton's fix. Had enough?”

“You filthy cocksucker,” Lloyd hissed.

Gaffaney spoke softly, as a loving parent would to a child. “I know your guilt, and I know you have to expiate it, and I know Garcia is convenient for that. But if we don't follow through on the investigation, then it means as policemen we mean nothing.”

Lloyd imitated Gaffaney's lucid lunatic whisper. “Captain, between us we've been hot dogging for over forty years. Joe Garcia is a drop in the bucket compared to all the railroad jobs we've pulled,
all the laws we've broken.
You're giving me a song and dance about the law to pump me up to kill you?
You are stone fucking insane.
”

Running his fingers over the wall photos, Fred Gaffaney said, “I heard a human interest story on the radio today. A bunch of high school kids found some of the robbery money strewn throughout their neighborhood, some inked, some not. They didn't turn it over to the proper authorities, of course; they descended on the Strip and tried to spend it as fast as they could. An off-duty sheriff's deputy saw a boy trying to change an inked twenty and got him to talk, but by the time a search team was dispatched to the area where the money was found, not a single dollar bill could be located. You see the kind of world we live in?”

Lloyd picked up the .357 and began loading it. “It's a pretty lackluster parable, Captain. Tell it to Collins and Lohmann. It'll get them jazzed up to do some serious ass-kicking. Have you gone forward with your information on Garcia? Anyone beside you and your boys know?”

“No, not yet.”

“Why did you burn your files?”

“I'm not a policeman anymore. I don't deserve to lead, and none of my followers are capable of leading. Th … that's finished.”

Snapping the cylinder, Lloyd said, “I did what I could. Garcia's got wheels and a head start, more than he would have had without me. You got anything to say?”

Gaffaney frowned. “Rice said, ‘She was a stone heart-breaker.' What do you think he meant?”

“I don't know, Captain. For the record, you did the right thing. He killed your son.”

Gaffaney reached out and touched Lloyd's arm; Lloyd batted his hand away and said, “What do
you
have to say?”

“Nothing,” Gaffaney said. “I have nothing.”

Lloyd placed the gun in the hands of his old enemy. “Then go out like a soldier, but don't take anyone else with you.”

“You won't?”

Lloyd said no and walked down the hall to the bathroom. He was clenching the edge of the tub, staring at the cross and flag logo, when he heard the shot. His hands jerked up, ripping out jagged chunks of porcelain, and then there was a second shot, and another and still another. He ran back to the study and found Gaffaney on his knees, holding the gun and an armful of framed photographs to his chest. He was muttering, “I've got nothing. I've got nothing.”