the Pallbearers (2010) (9 page)

SABAS VARGAS

A few minutes later, I saw a white woman dressed in a tailored cream-colored pantsuit, carrying an expensive-looking, oversized shoulder bag, walking up to a porch six houses away. She looked completely lost.

I watched as she knocked, waited for the door to open, then spoke for a moment to somebody inside. The door was abruptly slammed in her face.

I knew even before she turned that it was Vicki Lavicki walking around down here in her summer suit and sensible shoes like a Jehovah's Witness who drew the short straw.

Then a lowrider with four young thugs inside glided by, pulling to a stop where she was standing. She stupidly crossed to the lowered Chevy and started asking for directions.

The four teenaged vatos in the lowrider didn't seem to be paying much attention to what she was saying. They were busy taking inventory of her jewelry.

They got out of their axle-dragging mother ship and surrounded her on the sidewalk like a pack of wild coyotes about to shred a defenseless poodle.

I couldn't hear what was being said, but Ms. Lavicki didn't seem to appreciate the danger she was in. She had one hand in her purse fishing around for a pen or something, while four Latin Kings in black and gold head wraps were fanning out, going into attack mode.

"Shit," I muttered and got out of my car, pulling my badge, while moving quickly up the block toward her.

"Hey, Vicki!" I called out to distract them, holding up my creds as I ran. The four vato thugs spun to check me out, trying to decide whether to add me to the party or just roll on. I pulled back mv jacket as I ran, showing them my sidearm in its clip-on holster. Because they were just teenagers, I didn't want to draw down on them. I was pretty sure they were all packing but was trying not to initiate a gun
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fight. I kept my right hand near my gun and my left holding the creds high as I ran to let them know they'd be firing on a cop.

They hesitated for a minute, decided they didn't want that kind of trouble, got back into their lowered hood mobile, and pulled slowly off. They took the corner at the end of the block at an insolent five miles an hour.

"My hero," Vicki said dryly as I approached. "Very John Wayne, but I had that handled."

"You were seconds from getting unzipped," I told her, but she waved this off as she glanced clown at an address in her hand.

"I must ve gotten the wrong street number from Diamond," she said. "Where the hell is Vargas's office?"

"Listen, Ms. Lavicki, in the future it might not be such a good idea to wander around down here alone."

Her hazel eyes cut holes in me. "I was okay. You were the one causing the problem."

"You were not okay. Those guys were packing."

"Me too." Then she pulled her right hand out of the purse. The whole time she'd been holding a snub-nosed .44 caliber Charter Arms Bulldog with a wood-checked grip, aiming it at them from inside her purse.

"You're supposed to be a damn accountant. What kind of adding machine is that?"

"It subtracts to six, but there were only four, so you do the math," she said. Then, because I frowned deeply, she added, "Get over it, Scully. I sometimes carry cashier's checks for my firm. I have a permit."

"You were gonna shoot them?"

She stuffed the Bulldog back into her purse and smirked at me. "That was just a little chest bump. Those guys were only sniffing."

"And you re some kind of expert on street action," I shot back.

"Before I got put in Huntington House, I was raised in South Central," she replied. "I was the only white face on my block. The shit jumped off in that hood almost every night. We didn't have bars in our windows, we had MAC-lOs." She seemed tired of discussing this and abruptly changed the subject, showing me the slip of paper in her hand. "You know where Vargas's office is? These all look like houses. I was expecting a building."

"I'm glad you're not doing my taxes. This three should be an eight." I pointed to the bungalow half a block away.

Alexa had called Vicki a brass cupcake, and she was right. I now had a tough-talking pistol-packing CPA and ex-South Central hood rat from Kinney and Glass to worry about. I got my briefcase out of the MDX, and we walked up the path to the front door of Vargas's bungalow and rang the bell.

A minute later, a tough-looking male teenager opened up. He was dressed in Latin Kings colors, wearing a black and gold New Orleans Saints football jersey, a hairnet, and four-hundred-dollar Air Jordans. He also had a big LK emblazoned on the side of his neck and two teardrop tattoos under his right eye, indicating that, despite his tender age, he'd already lost two homies in the street.

The man-boy stared at us insolently but made no move to step out of the way. His attitude wasn't going to do much for the walk-in trade.

"We're here for the six o'clock meeting," Vicki said, not wavering under his malevolent stare. "You wanta go tell Mr. Vargas we're here or just stand there acting like a dickhead?"

Jesus ... I thought. But he just stepped aside and let us in.

I followed Vicki into the house. The bungalow looked to be entirely devoted to Sabas Vargas's legal practice. There were several hard-looking Hispanic women in their mid-twenties to thirties typing legal documents on computers and answering phones. Most of them also had teardrop tattoos. It wasn't like any law office I'd ever been in before. This staff looked like a bunch of parolees. Then one of the chica warriors stood and confronted us.

"What is it?" the tall, angry presence demanded.

"We're here to talk to Sabas." I fished out my trusty badge again. She glared, shrugged, then turned and, without a word, left us there, heading into the back.

"Put that thing away," Vicki whispered. "Nobody cares."

A moment later, Sabas came down the hall in shirtsleeves. Without the jacket and with his cuffs rolled up, I could see that he was heavier than I had originally thought. A roll of fat pressed at his belt line, a faded marine tattoo decorated one forearm.

"I'm just wrapping up a client conference," he said, and I noticed a very slight Mexican accent that I'd somehow failed to detect at the reception. "Some of the others are already gathered in the conference room. Follow me." We headed toward the back of the house.

I could see into the guest bedrooms that opened off the hall. They were full of records and supplies. One was outfitted with a copy
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machine and file cabinets. He led us into a den, which looked out over a small weed-choked backyard that surprisingly contained a cracked and empty kidney-shaped swimming pool. Then he left us, heading back down the hall to finish his meeting.

The room contained a fold-up conference table and ten metal chairs. Jack Straw was lounging in one, tipped back insolently. Seriana Cotton was sitting with rigid military posture in another. Diamond Peterson hadn't made it yet.

"I didn't see the Harley out front," I said.

"We both parked around back in Sabas's driveway," Straw replied. "You'd have to be brain dead to leave your ride out front."

I had a sudden mental image of my MDX jacked up, missing all four tires, radio, and airbags.

"This is quite a setup," I said, indicating the reception area out front. "I could probably make my arrest quotas for the week by just running this guys office staff."

"Sabas told us he takes a lot of pro bono cases," Seriana explained. "His clients and their families work in the office to settle out their legal expenses."

Before I could respond, Sabas Vargas came into the den and closed the door behind him. "Let's get started," he said, taking control of the meeting. "I just talked to Diamond and she said she had some inventory lists to take care of at Huntington House and will be a little late."

He pulled up his chair and sat at the edge of the table. "Okay, lets talk about how we go about proving Pop didn't kill himself so Huntington House can get this life-insurance check." He looked directly at me. "Shane, why don't you start by giving me a police take on that."

Chapter
16

"I'm not sure I have a take," I said, trying to cluck him. What I really wanted to do was to get the hell out. I already knew that coming here was a huge mistake.

Sabas Vargas had a deep bass voice that he used to control the room. "I know we re not all on the exact same page, but the idea of this meeting is to discuss whether or not its feasible that Pop would go into his backyard and blow his head off. A lot of you feel he wasn't that kind of guy."

"We don't know that," I said. "Diamond was the closest to him recently. She says he was stressed, worried about missing funds."

"Seriana tells me that you got the ME's report," Sabas went on, not reacting to that. "Anything in there that looks off?"

"No." I looked around at the room of Huntington House grads. None of them seemed too happy with me.

"Usually when I'm trying a death case, there's something in the ME report worth quarreling with," Sabas said suspiciously.

"Nothing," I repeated. "It was pretty standard. Pretty cut-and-dry." How the hell did I allow myself to get dragged into this?

"If you don't want to help, why did you bother coming?" Vicki Lavicki said, anger reddening her freckled, schoolgirl complexion.

"I came because Seriana asked me to," I defended. "It doesn't mean I think we're going to find anything."

"You also told Corporal Cotton you were looking into Pop's death on your own," Vicki pressed. "So it's okay for you to check it out, but it's not okay for the rest of us."

I glanced over at Seriana who held my gaze silently, never blinking.

"I was checking a few things because I agree it wasn't Pop's style or in his general demeanor to pull something like this. Also, I agree that the bungalow fire seems a bit much on top of the suicide, so I spent twenty minutes to check out the coroner's autopsy. Not much there. You can read it for yourselves."

I took the report out of my briefcase, again leaving the grisly autopsy photos behind, and slid the file across the table. Seriana had already read it, so she passed it on to Vicki, who passed it to Sabas, who passed it to Jack. Once they had all finished, they returned it to me.

"So you find nothing was done inappropriately at the coroner's inquest? Nothing wrong with the police investigation?" Sabas asked. "You're absolutely sure?"

"I'm sure. I talked to the cops who got the original rollout. Nothing in their investigation suggested anything but suicide. They gave me a copy of Walt's suicide note. It was written on his computer, only his prints on the keyboard. I have it here."

I also put that on the table, and it followed the same path as the ME report, going hand to hand around the room. When they finished reading those seven lines, each of the pallbearers looked up. I could see frustration on Vicki's face, anger in Seriana s intense black eyes. Jack was tipping back, arms folded, flashing forearm art. Sabas Vargas seemed to be losing energy for this as the pieces I'd gathered started to paint a depressing picture of suicide.

"Pop didn't write that," Vicki suddenly blurted. "It's not in his handwriting, just a computer printout. He wouldn't say he got pulled down by leash drag or did a yard sale. What kind of BS is that?"

That was sort of my take too, but I didn't say anything. I wasn't going to stop working on this, I just didn't want to do it with them.

"You're sure nothing in the ME's report seemed out of the ordinary?" Sabas said skeptically. "Not even one little detail?"

"Well ..." I stopped. They all leaned forward. I knew in that second that I'd just made a major blunder. They knew I had something, and I didn't want to go down that road. What was I doing? I felt myself being pulled in by a sense of belonging. We'd all been there. All residents of the home. I owed Pop, but did I owe these people?

"Well what?" Vicki said. "What is it? You found something?"

"I didn't find anything. It's just that..." I looked again at their expectant faces. What the hell. Since I'd already stumbled, I might as well finish the fall. "The coroner told me they give the obvious suicide autopsies to the new medical examiners. According to the shift supervisor, this Barbara Wilkes person who did Pop's ME report has only been on the job for six months."

"So she could have missed something?" Jack said, smiling, looking triumphantly at Seriana, who, as usual, had no expression.

"I didn't say that. I just said she was new. Not a lot of experience."

"And that means she could have missed something," Jack repeated. He leaned forward, bringing the two chair legs down abruptly.

"It's possible but not probable," I said.

They all looked at me, waiting. For some damn reason, it made me edgy. Or maybe I was just feeling guilty. The moment simmered

"Whatta ya want!?" I snapped angrily. "Stop looking at me. It doesn't mean anything. Besides,
I
can't work on this. It's not even a case. I spent a couple a hours and got my hands on a few things, but that's all I can do. No case, no crime. No crime, no investigation!"

"Shane, if you were going to do something ... if you could take one more step, what would it be?" It was a good question, asked in a quiet voice by Seriana Cotton. Her voice might have been soft, but her black irises were stuck on mine like laser-gun sights.