The Cocaine Chronicles (20 page)
The room went dead quiet. Fat Tommy strained to hear the shuffling of the cops’ shoes behind him, but could only hear his own heart beating,
thu-thump, thu-thump
.
Then Dockery said, “Cut? You never mentioned any Cut.”
Fat Tommy could feel the life draining from his chest. He slowly opened his eyes. He began to hyperventilate and for the first time he could feel the jheri curl gel-deluxe begin to drip against his collar.
“You said I could have water. I need some water,” Fat Tommy pleaded.
“You can have water, Moises, after you tell us how it went down,” DEA agent Braddock growled from somewhere behind him.
“Tell us about this Cut,” Vargas continued, piling on. “He got a last name?”
“Cut . . . um . . . Cut Pemberton . . . I think.”
“And?”
“I didn’t know him that good.”
“Go on,” Vargas said.
“Gots a cut cross his ear, go straight cross his lip, like he was wearing a veil on one side of his face.”
“Yes . . . ?”
“Said he got it in a fight with a cracker when he was in the Marines. But I heard he got it in prison.”
“Okay . . . go on.”
“He can talk Spanish.”
“Go on,” Dockery said. “Cut . . .”
“Well, Cut was the onliest one that did it.”
“Go on.”
“Cut was one of them red, freckly niggahs from Georgia.
Spotted like a African cat. I didn’t even know him good . . .”
“Um-hum.”
“Wore plaits standing all over his head.”
“Plaits? Really?”
Tears were streaming down his eyes, but Fat Tommy grinned. “My Bea used to call him BuckBeet, ’cause he looked like a red pickaninny. That used to piss him off, ’cause of Buckwheat, you know?”
“Yes . . . Cut . . .”
“Yeah, Cut. First I knew of him . . . two years ago . . . when I was staying on Glen Oaks off Paxton . . . him and Karesha—my wife’s sister—and my Uncle Bunny banged on my duplex at ’bout 2 in the morning looking for some crack.”
“You mean Bunny Hobart—the second-story man?” Dockery broke in again. The detectives had two tape recorders going now, but Dockery never trusted electronic equipment and was transcribing everything Fat Tommy said on a yellow legal pad.
“Yeah, that be him,” Fat Tommy said. He slumped back in the hard metal chair, trembling as he recalled the scene. “He knew Cut from the joint. Cut had just got out and was chillin’ with Karesha. Cut was already dressin’ like a Crip, all blue, talkin’ shit. I could tell he was trouble. He used to strong-arm young Gs and take their stuff.”
“And Bunny told him you were the big-time coke man,” Braddock said. It was not a question.
“I was gettin’ out of the business. I was gettin’ out,” Fat Tommy explained. “It was Cut that fucked up all my plans. He wanted to impress the big-time talent . . . I was only stayin’ in till he could get on his feets.”
“What big-time talent?”
“Colombians, La Caja Crips . . . it was them goddamn Colombians that told Cut about Simpson. They said he was a snitch—not no cop! Cut came up with the idea of settin’ the guy up. I tried to talk him out of it; I tried to reason with him . . .”
“A regular Dr. Phil,” Braddock said.
“Yes, sir,” Fat Tommy said quietly. His heart was sputtering like an old Volkswagen.
“Catch your breath, son,” Vargas said. “Get our boy King Moises some lemonade, will ya, Dockery?”
Fat Tommy flopped his big grease-spangled head down into his hands. From the top of his jheri curl to the soles of his size-18 Air Jordans, everything about him was huge, extroverted, and showy. Now, he sat hulking in the metal chair, trying in vain to make himself smaller, hoping that the willful diminishment of his great size would in turn minimize in the minds of the cops the appalling grandeur of his recent crimes. He sat there in his bright white tent of a shirt with his Martin Luther King, Jr. tie strung tight round his bulging neck like a painted garrote.
Far above the dull cacophony of the cops grinding away at his statement, Fat Tommy O’Rourke—a.k.a., Moises Rockafella, La Caja’s King of Rock Cocaine—could hear a plaintive, high-pitched wail, a shrill, sad voice, strangely resembling his own. He prayed to Christ it was someone else.
Teresa Moody
BILL MOODY
is the author of the Evan Horne mystery series. The latest release is
Looking for Chet Baker.
Moody is a jazz musician, a DJ at KSVY in Sonoma, California, and teaches creative writing at Sonoma State University.
H
ello? Yes, I want to report a stolen car. Robert Ware. Oh, for Christ’s sake. Okay, okay. I don’t know when. Last night sometime, I guess.”
Bobby Ware tried to calm down. He gave his address and license number and continued to answer questions. “It’s a blue 1989 Chevy Camaro Sport.” He listened to the other questions and lit a cigarette.
“It was in front of my house. Oh yeah, there was a horn too. What? No, not the car horn. A tenor saxophone in a gig bag. What? Oh, a soft leather case. Yeah, that’s right. Okay, thanks.”
Bobby hung up the phone and sat for a minute, smoking, thinking. “Fuck,” he said out loud. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Finally got his dream car and some asshole stole it.
Man, I gotta move,
he thought.
Too much shit in this neighborhood.
He got up, paced around. Barefoot, cut-off jeans, sandals, and a Charlie Parker T-shirt, his daytime uniform, trying to think who he could borrow a horn from for the gig tonight.
He was working in a quartet at a club on Ventura, backing a singer who was trying to convince everybody she was the next Billie Holiday, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. But hey, a gig was a gig. Three nights a week for three months now, so he couldn’t really complain.
He replayed last night in his mind. He’d come home, tired and anxious to get in the house, and totally spaced, leaving his tenor in the car. That wasn’t like him or any horn player, but too late now. He sat down and turned on the TV, hoping he wasn’t going to see his Camaro in one of those car chases the city had become famous for.
When Lisa got home, he was still sitting in front of the TV, watching the news, but there were no stolen car reports and no news from the police.
“Hi, baby,” Lisa said. She was carrying a bag from the Lotus Blossom Chinese takeout. “You hungry?” She set the bag down on the kitchen table and walked over to Bobby.
She was in her Century City law-office outfit—skirt, blouse, half heels, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She sat on the arm of Bobby’s chair and kissed him lightly on the lips, then let herself slip over the arm onto his lap.
“What’s the matter?”
“Somebody stole my car.”
“Oh, baby, and you just had it serviced and waxed.”
“Tell me. But it gets worse.”
“What?”
“My horn was in the car.”
“Oh no, did you report it?”
Bobby pushed her off him. “Of course I fucking reported it.”
Lisa held up her hands. “Okay, okay.”
Bobby sighed. “I’m sorry, babe, but you know what the chances are of getting back a stolen car in L.A.?” Especially that car. Bobby had read somewhere that Camaros, even older ones, were popular among car thieves. By now it was probably stripped clean at a chop shop, and somebody was trying to figure out how to put the saxophone together.
For as long as he could remember—at least since high school—Bobby had wanted a Camaro. He could never afford a new one, and good used ones were hard to come by. Then one afternoon, driving back from the store, he’d found this one parked on a side street with a “For Sale” sign in the window. A blue Camaro Sport. One owner, all the service records, and the car looked like it had hardly been driven more than to the store. Now it was gone.
He took Lisa’s Toyota to the gig, after dredging up a tenor from a former student who wasn’t sure he wanted to pursue jazz anymore. Bobby had helped him pick out the horn so it was a good one, but it wasn’t Bobby’s old Zoot Sims model he’d bought from a guy on the street in New York.
After the second set, he was standing in the parking lot behind Gino’s with the bass player, a tall thin guy who played good and didn’t care anything about singers. They watched a tan Ford Taurus pull in, and two guys in rumpled suits got out and came over.
The bass player cupped the joint in his hand and started walking toward the club. “Cops, man.”
“Are you Robert Ware?” the older of the two asked Bobby. The younger one watched the bass player walk away.
“Yeah. Is this about my car?” Bobby was wary. They didn’t usually send detectives out for stolen cars.
“I’m afraid so,” the older cop said, casually showing Bobby his ID. He looked at Bobby for what seemed like a long time. “We found traces of cocaine in your car, Mr. Ware.”
“No, that’s not mine,” Bobby said. “I’m not into coke.”
The younger cop nodded, smiling knowingly at Bobby.
“No, seriously, man. Coke is not my thing.” He held up his cigarette. “This is it for me.”
The older cop took out a small notebook and flipped through some pages. “Do you know a Raymond Morales? Hispanic male, twenty-nine years old.”
“No.”
“You didn’t let him borrow your car?”
“Borrow my car … What are you talking about? I don’t loan my car to anyone. Ask my girlfriend.”
“We did. She told us where to find you.”
They all turned and looked as the side door opened and the bass player peeked out. “Hey, man, we’re on.”
“Listen,” Bobby said, “can you guys wait a bit? We have the last set to do and then we can talk.”
The two cops looked at each other and shrugged. The older one said, pointing across the street, “We’ll be at Denny’s.”
“Cool,” Bobby said. “You did find the car, right?”
The younger cop looked at him and smiled again. “Oh yeah.”
Bobby found them in a back booth drinking coffee and eating pie. He sat his horn on the floor, slid in next to the younger cop, and ordered coffee.
“So? What’s the deal on my car? When can I get it back? Was there much damage?”
The two cops glanced at each other. “There was some damage,” the younger one said.
“Oh fuck,” Bobby said, loudly enough that a couple in the next booth turned and looked. “I knew it. Totaled, stripped, or what?”
“Bullet holes,” the younger cop said.
“What?”
“Mr. Ware,” the older cop began, “your car was involved in a high-speed chase early this morning. Raymond Morales was driving. He apparently ran out of gas. He emerged from your car with a weapon and fired on the pursuing officers. They returned fire and Mr. Morales was shot at the scene.”
“Jesus,” Bobby said. He sat stunned, not knowing what to say.
“The driver’s side door has holes, the window was shattered, and there were several bullets lodged in the seat.”
“Is he …?”
Both cops nodded.
“I’m sorry,” Bobby said, wondering about Raymond Morales.
“It happens,” the younger cop said.
“Your girlfriend said you reported there was a saxophone in the car?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“We didn’t find it.”
Bobby looked at both of them. “What do you mean, you didn’t find it?”
“Wasn’t in the car,” the younger one said.
They talked some more without giving up much information about the incident or when he could get his car back. The older cop gave Bobby his card and said they’d be in touch. They left Bobby to finish his coffee and think about Raymond Morales.
Two days later Bobby got a call from the older cop. Lloyd Foster, Bobby remembered from the business card. “We’re done,” Foster said. “You can pick up your car tomorrow morning.”
“Anything new?” Bobby asked.
“Like what?” When Bobby couldn’t think of what to ask, Foster said, “See you in the morning.”
Bobby was prepared for the worst when he arrived at the impound garage. Foster and the younger cop were waiting for him. Bobby was surprised to see the car mostly intact. The entire driver’s side window was gone. The techs had cleaned it out, Foster told him. When he opened the door, he saw the small round holes in the seats where the bullets had lodged.
There were dark spots on the seat—blood stains that hadn’t been entirely erased—and there was a strange smell Bobby couldn’t place. He looked at the two cops.
Foster shrugged. “Techs use all kinds of compounds, liquids to secure evidence. It’ll go away eventually.”
Bobby walked around the car. On the passenger door there were some minor dents and paint scrapings from when Morales had sideswiped a car or a telephone pole or something else in his attempt to get away.
“Why didn’t he just, you know, give up, instead of trying to shoot it out?”
The two cops exchanged glances and shrugged.
They handed him some papers to sign to release the car and gave him copies. Then they watched him get in the car and adjust the seat. Morales must have been short—the seat was closer to the wheel than Bobby kept it. He nodded at them, backed the car out of the garage, and drove off. In the rearview mirror, he caught them watching him till he turned the corner.
He pulled into the first gas station and filled up. He used the Yellow Pages to find a glass repair shop and jotted down the address of two not far away. Ed’s Auto Glass was the first.
“We can do it while you wait,” the man at the desk said. “What happened? Somebody try to break into your car?”
“Something like that,” Bobby said. “It was stolen.”
“Wow, and you got it back. Lucky,” he said, sliding a clipboard across the counter so Bobby could initial the estimate form. “Give me an hour.”
Bobby went for a walk, bought a Coke at a convenience store, and smoked, thinking about Raymond Morales dying in his car. He pictured the car, out of gas, skidding to a stop, Morales throwing the door open, hiding behind it, firing at the cops, the glass shattering, bullets embedding in the seat, and then falling backwards as a bullet struck him in the chest. He couldn’t get the vision out of his mind. All for some cocaine. How much? What was it worth? His life?
He got home before Lisa and examined the car’s interior inch by inch, not knowing what he was looking for but unable to let it go. He felt under both seats, up in the springs, in the channel the seat slid back and forth on. He even lay under it with a flashlight, knowing the cops had already done this but not trusting their thoroughness.
He opened the hatch, raised the flap where the spare tire was kept, took the tire out and felt around the compartment, shined the flash everywhere, but it was no go. The car was clean.
The only evidence of the incident were the holes in the seat and the dark stain. Raymond Morales’s blood.
“Hey, you got it back,” Lisa said, getting out of her car. Bobby hadn’t even heard her drive up.
“Yeah.” He shut the hatch and locked it, as Lisa walked all around the car.
“Looks okay,” she said.
He nodded and shrugged at her look. “No horn.” He opened the driver’s side door and showed her the bullet holes in the seat, the dark stain.
She just stared. “Jesus, kind of spooky, isn’t it?”
Bobby got on Lisa’s computer and went to the
Los Angeles Times
website to check on obituaries. He skimmed through starting with the date after his car was stolen and found it five days after
:
Raymond Morales, 1974–2004. Beloved son of Angela
Morales. Survivors include his sister Gabriela. A memorial
service will be held Wednesday, May 15 at …
Bobby jotted down the date and time and glared at the photo of Raymond Morales, obviously taken a few years before his death. It was almost like a high school yearbook photo. Just a nice looking kid, three years younger than Bobby. He told himself he was only going out of curiosity, maybe to see if someone had any information about the horn, but he knew it was more than that.
He drove into Inglewood Park Cemetery and found the site easily. There were at least thirty or more tricked-out lowrider cars and a single limo parked along the curb. A plain tan sedan Bobby recognized as Foster’s car was also there.
Bobby parked as close as he could and got out. A ways in on the lawn, among the hundreds of tombstones, he saw the small crowd gathered around the grave site. Foster and the younger cop were standing behind the fringe of mourners. Foster turned as Bobby walked up.
“Interesting,” he said to Bobby. His younger partner turned and smiled.
“What are you guys doing here?” Bobby asked.
“Routine,” Foster said. “We know Morales ran with some of these dudes. We’re just compiling some information.” Foster looked at him. “What about you? Car spooking you?” This made the other cop smile again.
