In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries) Read online

  It seemed as if the tiny room, if you could call it a room, suddenly had ears, and no air. I could smell old paper files and the cloying sweetness of that damn cookie, and Eldon's sweat, and decades of ill-swept dust. I sat there, on a hard-bottomed oak library chair like the ones in the office of my high school principal, Sister Agnes Peter, feeling as if I had been caught again smoking behind the language lab. They always laid in wait, those well-scrubbed nuns who smelled of Lifebuoy soap, to trap you for either sins of omission or sins committed. I swear to you, in that cramped cubbyhole office I smelled Lifebuoy soap. One of the lessons I carry from my proper convent education is that, whatever the sin, in the long run, the punishment is always worse for not knowing what I should know than for doing something I shouldn't.

  "You want some water or something?" Eldon asked.

  "It's been a rough few days, that's all. I forgot to eat today."

  He nodded.

  "Boni watch?" I said. "What's that?"

  "The D.A. called me out of retirement," he said. "Made me an offer. He knew I needed to get back on a public servant's medical plan, knew about my boy, and he knew my work record. My assignment is tracking both Boni Erquiaga's actions and his accusations. Boni is still trying to cut a deal that will reduce his sentence or get him sprung. He accuses other cops of all sorts of things. I try to find out if there's any substance to anything he says before the press gets hold of it and ruins an innocent man's life."

  "Did Boni Erquaiga initiate the accusation that brought Mike before the grand jury looking into Jesus?"

  "Everything that happens before the grand jury is secret. That's the function of the grand jury, to protect the whistle blower, the vulnerable witness, the unfairly accused."

  I looked at Eldon, feeling suddenly weary, on the verge of the random weepiness that swept over me now and then, beginning from the moment I first heard about Mike's death.

  "You want my job?" he asked.

  I shook my head. I must have looked sufficiently pathetic because he relented, answered my question. At least part of it.

  "Yes," he said. "Boni accused Mike of making Jesus disappear. He accused you of knowing, and helping cover it up."

  "I didn't know Mike when Jesus disappeared."

  "Pillow talk is admissible to the grand jury."

  "Lordy," I said.

  "He accused me of hiding the body and Kenny Noble of covering for us."

  "And Nelda?"

  "Innocent bystander, wrongfully accused."

  "Why would you all conspire to take out Jesus?" I asked. "Why would so many people risk their careers? Their freedom?"

  "They wouldn't. Remember, the whole thing got thrown out."

  True, I thought, but the accusations still got as far as the grand jury. Again, I got up from the chair, walked to the window, hoped for fresh air; there was no breeze outside, only city traffic noise.

  "On that day, you called Central Station when you saw Nelda Ruiz selling drugs on the street," I said. "Why not just put her in cuffs and take her in yourself?"

  He thought about the question, or his answer, for a moment. Then he sighed as if he had made a decision. The decision, apparently, was to talk.

  "I had instructions from Parker Center to watch Nelda," he said, turning in his chair to look at me. "She had been a dealer for Rogelio. Rogelio was dead only a few days when Nelda was already back in business. All of the people in the neighborhood we knew of who were his dealers were back in business. Downtown wanted to know how that could be. Nelda was one of mine to keep track of. I saw her do her thing, I put in the call to the head shed, Parker Center, as instructed by Mike Flint himself. Parker relayed my call to Central dispatch and it went out over the radio."

  "Mike showed up," I said. "But somehow Boni got there first."

  "Everything that day went according to Mike's plan," Eldon said. "He used Nelda as the lure to pull Boni in; I was waiting specifically for her. Mike knew Boni was dirty. Mike wanted the two of them in the same place, and he wanted to control when and where that was. He had the call put out to Central knowing Boni would hear it and come over to protect Nelda. Or to silence her, protect himself."

  I came closer, leaned against a corner of the desk, looked at Eldon closely. "Was Nelda bugged?"

  He shook his head. "Boni's car was."

  "Did Boni know?"

  "Can't be sure. He might have suspected."

  "Did Mike get anything from the tape?"

  "Nothing usable. On the tape Boni told Nelda he knew someone was trying to move in on Rogelio's territory and he thought Nelda knew who it was. Nelda denied it. It was the sort of conversation a cop could have with a suspect or a distributor could have with one of his dealers who could be double-crossing him, or someone sending up a smokescreen."

  "Not a lover's tiff?"

  "A video would have been better, might have caught Nelda with her face in his lap. Otherwise, zip. Boni doesn't incriminate himself, she admits nothing."

  "But he thought she knew who the competition was."

  "She would. He knew it, we all did." He slid the snapshot I had taken of Nelda across the desk toward me. "This is the closest that anyone I know has gotten to Nelda since she got out of Frontera."

  "Yeah." I bent down and picked up my bag, swung it over my shoulder. "Don't suppose you'll repeat any of this on camera for me?"

  "Nothing to repeat. I haven't told you a single thing." He rose and offered me his hand. "Not one single thing."

  I nodded. I expected that answer.

  Eldon came around his desk to walk out with me.

  "Mike kept working that case," Eldon said. "Kept everything close to his vest. After the grand jury, he said he'd have nothing to say until he had a package of evidence to deliver so the D.A. could file a dead-bang case. I'd give anything to know what he was holding."

  The possibility was that Mike was being secretive because he suspected a cop, an insider, someone like Eldon.

  I turned to Eldon as I punched the elevator down button. "Is there an assistant D.A. named Tiffany?"

  He nodded. "She's working family court."

  "You might have a conversation with her about keeping her mind and her information channels open."

  "What did she do?"

  "Ask her about turning away potential information to take to the grand jury. See what she says."

  The elevator doors opened and I stepped inside. As the doors closed, a question occurred to me. I reached my hand into the gap and triggered the doors to open again.

  "Eldon?"

  He had already turned, head bowed, hands in the pockets of his trousers, and had started back toward his cubicle. He stopped when I called out to him, and, head still low on hunched shoulders, looked back at me.

  "Monday night, when I was at Central riding with Harry Young," I said. "Why were you there?"

  "Mike was my friend. I wanted to make sure you were okay. Make sure you weren't in over your head."

  The last thing I saw before the elevator door closed was a single tear rolling down Eldon Washington's cheek.

  Chapter 9

  Cue Atlanta. Send one, then send two." The news director, a man named Cavenaugh, sat next to Early Drummond, the technical director, in front of the immense control console in Studio 8 speaking to his counterparts across the country. It was three o'clock on the West Coast. East Coast six o'clock news segments were coming in to the Burbank studio live from sister studios in New York, Washington, and Atlanta to be taped for rebroadcast three hours later, Pacific Time, bookended by local news hours.

  The big studio was dark except for the work lights on the engineers' console and the ranks of monitors above them, about two dozen flashing screens. Voices floated down from the tiers of plush seats rising behind the engineers in the studio, but it was difficult to pick out faces in the gloom. Somewhere up there the West Coast producer, a frizzle-haired, middle-aged woman named Ida, sat at a desk and presided over everything happening in Studio 8.

  Ida's
primary job was to look for inessential stories that could be cut in case late-breaking or pertinent local news needed to be patched in for the West Coast broadcast three hours later. Whatever she patched in had to be an exact fit for the time hole she cut out. The process is as much art as it is timing and science.

  I leaned against the wall beside Early, fascinated, as always, by it all. My excuse for being in the news booth was to be on hand when Early fed my promo video to New York after the East Coast news feed came through, while the satellite connection was still open. In New York, the tape desk would receive the transmission, convert it to disc, and hand-carry it to the network's programming offices, booted and ready when Lana arrived for her pitch meeting with the execs Friday morning.

  When the broadcast was over, Ida gave notes to her engineers in Burbank and to their counterparts in New York for the edited rebroadcast.

  "There's an overturned big rig on the Pomona Freeway screwing up rush hour traffic," she said. "Let's dump the story about flooding in New Jersey and the earthquake in California. No one out here cares about rain back there and no one here felt that little-bitty quake. New York only added the quake to make them feel better about their crappy weather."

  Early swiveled in his chair and peered up into the dark studio toward Ida. "Is tape coming in from the wreck?"

  "Chopper's on its way there now. Microwave link should be coming in shortly."

  "While we're waiting for the visuals of the wreck," Early said, "and while the bird is still open, we have this Maggie MacGowen promo to send to New York programming. Guy at the tape desk knows it's coming and where it goes."

  "Welcome, Maggie," Ida said. "Wondered why you were slumming down here."

  "Hi, Ida," I said. All I could see of her behind her little desk light was the reflection off her spectacles and a halo of red-brown frizz. "Thanks for the assist."

  "New York got the sound check," Cavenaugh said, "and speed." He signaled Early. "They're rolling."

  "We're sending your piece live time, Maggie," Early said. "It's cued up to go in five." He turned forward again, toward the bank of monitors on the wall in front of him. Cavenaugh picked up the count, "Four, three..."

  My series logo graphics appeared, MAGGIE MACGOWEN INVESTIGATES, over a fast-moving assemblage of images, most of them me, usually in motion, culled from various documentaries and outtakes. The title came up: THE MIKE FLINT LEGACY. The narrative began, the visuals played, the soundtrack rocked.

  At first, I was so intent on watching the promo that I blocked out all of the conversations in the studio. After maybe a minute, I became aware that the room, usually full of activity and chatter, had fallen absolutely silent. I looked around, thinking that I was alone in the studio with Early and the sound engineer, that maybe everyone else had gone out for a break. But the crew was still there, every face turned up to watch the single monitor where my video promo ran, every face washed in the kaleidoscopic colors of the flashing screen.

  A room full of the real pros, I thought, was a tougher audience than the suits Lana would face in New York. I tried to read them as they watched, waiting for the sudden drop of the head that could mean disdain, or laughter in the wrong place, or boredom. They were all markedly still. I wished I could see this project as they did, freshly, because I had seen it and its earlier versions so many times that I had lost all objectivity.

  Considering the mix of stuff Guido and Early had to work with, and the time available, they did a masterful job of video and sound editing and balancing light levels and merging sharp archival footage with some of the cruder new stuff. The piece had an intentional rawness, a sense of barely contained energy that I believed captured both the cultural richness and the unpredictable nature of life in the city. A colorful olio that might spin into pandemonium at any moment; you never know what might happen next in LA. The narrative had substance, suspense, made promises I hoped we could deliver in the final, televised version of the project.

  The ultimate sequence came up, Broadway running through downtown, shoppers at the end of a work day, maybe with the day's pay to spend. The scene was shot out the back of a Suburban van inching though traffic, the camera lens all but invisible to passersby. The sidewalks teemed with people, whole families laden with colorful plastic shopping bags. Randomly they walked into the street, spilling off the sidewalks like a floodtide surging over river banks. Faces in close-up as people played chicken with traffic and crossed at midblock, walking all but right into the camera lens, filling its field of vision, moving off the side. Everywhere, a colorful, noisy, disorganized parade of people. Then, close up on a light pole, Jesus Ramon's well-weathered missing person poster nearly lost among overlapping notices and ads for who-knows-what that were tacked to the same pole later. As the van moved away, Jesus became a mere dot. The music quieted from raucous Banda to a single plaintive guitar. The colorful chaos of Broadway faded to gray, the last long note from the guitar died. Fade to black.

  I looked at my watch: running time six minutes, twenty seconds.

  The silence afterward seemed to last forever. I knew the critique was coming, wanted to hear it, dreaded it at the same time. The first voice came out of the dark behind me.

  "Mr. Drummond." Ida, the news producer, had something to say, and from the sarcasm in her tone, it wasn't huzzahs.

  Taking his own time to respond, Early swiveled in his chair and looked up in her direction.

  "You worked on the promo?"

  "Yep," he said.

  "I recognized your handiwork. Good job. And Miss MacGowen, congratulations and good luck with it."

  I said, "Thank you."

  She came back with, "Early, you go ahead and enjoy yourself working with Maggie on this project, but when I need you in news I don't want to find you MIA, wandering around Special Projects somewhere."

  He chuckled. "Yes, boss."

  "That goes for the rest of you guys, too," she warned as she gathered her things and rose to leave. Her parting was, "Good job, all. Good job."

  The studio was absolutely silent until the door closed behind her, and then the staff erupted in laughter.

  "Ball-breaker," one of the techs groused.

  "I heard that, Richard." Ida's voice from the next room crackled through a speaker.

  "I meant it in the nicest way."

  A click as she switched off the microphone was Ida's last comment.

  I looked at Early. "Guess I was an independent too long. I keep stumbling over network protocols. Did I need a permission slip from the News Division to use the facilities?"

  "Don't worry about it." He grinned, prideful I thought. "That was the green-eyed monster speaking. Everyone here, including Ida, wants to be doing what you're doing. I really appreciate you giving me the chance to work with you."

  Cavenaugh, sitting next to him, turned to Early. "You going to give us the 'anything for my art' speech?"

  "Yep, that's the one." Early gave the man's chair a little shake.

  Everyone laughed.

  "Well, this has been fun," I said, and gathered my own things. "Thanks Early, thank you everyone. You've made this look too easy. You've made me look better than I deserve."

  And then the critique began: could have done this, or that, need to do this; suggestions, good ones, about resources and technique; and lots of questions. Also, several folks offered their services and the facilities of the News Division. When they were finished, I thanked them again.

  Early walked me out. "You get a little break now?"

  "I told Guido I'd go find him when we finished here. He has his video crew down on Alvarado."

  "I'm off after the six o'clock broadcast. I'll keep an eye out till you get home."

  I didn't protest.

  "Thanks again, Early. For everything."

  "Take care, neighbor."

  • • •

  I caught up with Guido and his video crew west of downtown where they were shooting the neighborhood around Jesus Ramon's mother's bodega. When I got o
ut of my car the two union men, cameraman Paul Savoie and soundman and field producer Craig Hendricks, both of whom I had worked with before, acknowledged my arrival by waving my shadow away from the camera's field of vision.

  Guido had brought a six-pack of eager film students, all of them garnished with the requisite body piercings and tattoos of the hip and artsy young. When the students recognized me there was a ripple, a frisson, among them. Guido, I thought, had attached my name to some possibilities for their futures.

  Guido introduced each student to me in turn, a handshake and a personal comment, some cheerleading, required for each. The old pros sort of groaned when they saw the kids' reaction to me, and went about their work, videoing the street action around them. Sometimes I imagine how lovely it would be to be anonymous, or better, invisible when I'm working. And sometimes I like the fuss.

  Guido handed me a business card with a shiny gold LAPD shield, SGT. LEWIS BANKS, CENTRAL DIVISION printed in black. Guido said, "He dropped by, hung out a while waiting for you. Said to call if you had any security issues. I don't know if he was angling for a job or for a date."

  "I'll call him," I said, and slipped the card into my pocket. I wanted to talk to Banks about what he might know, but thought a formal on-camera interview might be the best way to do that. Have him on my turf, not his.

  Guido was summoned to check a setup. I wandered around, looking at the scene they were videoing.

  Evening in the barrio is family time. The air in the neighborhood that Thursday evening was rich with the aromas of food cooking, onions and cilantro, chiles and meat and hot lard. Houses in the area are small and old, two-, maybe three-bedroom prewar stucco or even older wood-frame bungalows set in small yards surrounded by Cyclone fence.

  Among these small houses there are also various versions of multiple-family dwellings ranging in size from duplexes to largish apartment buildings or old-style court apartments, all of them of a certain age. Few of the units are large enough for the families that inhabit them, like the little apartment of Teresa and Xochi, and cooking on such a hot day probably made them damned uncomfortable inside.