In the Guise of Mercy (Maggie Macgowen Mysteries) Page 4

  "That won't happen," I said. "Mike can't be touched."

  "Says who? Doesn't matter what the truth is, there are people out there who can put a spin on some nothing situation and make it seem like mass murder if they want to," he said. "Look at me. I don't deserve to be in here for the rest of my life for what I done."

  "Tell me about the day Jesus Ramon went missing."

  "You're persistent," he said, shaking his head. Then he sighed, looked me in the eye, and said, "Jesus was a snitch, okay? From time to time I helped him out in exchange for inside information about his gang set. If police don't use snitches, letting us know what's going on, we'd have open gang warfare on the streets all the time.

  "On the day you're talking about, we were bringing in some Thirteenth Street gangsters to Central Division based on a tip from Jesus. Thirteenth Street and the set both Jesus and Nelda belonged to, Sleepy Lagoon, have been at war for as long as I can remember. When a call came in that Nelda was getting arrested, I went out to make sure she didn't show up at Central when the rival Thirteenth Street set were there because you never know who might say something stupid and get something started. I knew Mike wanted to talk to her about some homicide. This dealer who got shot; Higgins was his name, Rogelio Higgins. So, I thought I'd go out there, get Nelda and take her downtown to talk to Mike.

  "I went over to Alvarado Avenue. Eldon had Nelda hooked up and he was talking to her. I told Eldon what was going down at Central. He said he wanted to stay on observation and didn't want to take the time to go all the way to Parker Center, so I agreed to take Nelda downtown.

  "Right about then, Jesus walks up. Mike arrived right after him. Mike hooked up the kid and popped him into his car for his own protection, made it look like he was getting busted, to keep him out of trouble. Nelda was already in my car. So Mike tells me to go ahead downtown with her and he'd be right along, after he dropped off Jesus. And that's all I know. I took Nelda downtown and waited for Mike."

  "Why didn't Mike take Nelda if he wanted to talk to her?"

  "Like I said, she was already in my car."

  "And you wanted to talk to Nelda." I looked at him hard. "Mike did you a favor."

  "Okay, yeah, he did. And, yeah, I wanted to talk to Nelda. Give her a little friendly advice."

  "What did you ask Mike to do with Jesus?"

  "I didn't ask him to do anything. Mike was a Detective Three. A street cop doesn't tell a D-Three what to do. I just told him what was going down at Central." Boni seemed exasperated, a very bad temper bubbling near the surface. "Mike knew what to do."

  "And you took Nelda downtown for the same reason, to get her away from rival gangbangers?"

  He nodded. "Look, maybe a situation got out of hand. Something bad probably happened to that kid, Jesus, and I'm sorry for the rest of my life that it did. So's Mike," he said. "We were doing our job the best way we knew how, trying to keep the bad guys off the streets. Unless you've been on the job you don't know what goes on out there. Things happen sometimes, you know. You make a wrong call, a misjudgment, someone gets hurt.

  "I'll tell you this: Whatever Mike or me or anyone else did or did not do, the one single person responsible for anything that happened to Jesus Ramon was Jesus Ramon. He chose who he wanted to hang with, and maybe he paid the price for it."

  "He's not the only one paying that price, is he?"

  Boni looked at me, hard. "How'd you get in here, anyway? Who checked the wrong box?"

  "Kenny Noble."

  "Lieutenant Noble?" Boni said, lights coming on behind his dark eyes. "Head of Robbery-Homicide lied for you? You have some powerful friends."

  "Ken Noble is Mike's friend."

  "Good for Mike." Again, Boni looked for the guard. "We finished?"

  "You haven't answered my question."

  "You going to put something in my commissary account?"

  "On my way out. I won't forget."

  "I'll have to think about your question."

  "I'll be back," I said.

  "Suit yourself." I tried to read the expression that dropped over him. He said, simply, "I'll be here," put his handset on the hook, turned away from me, and signaled the guard that he was ready to go.

  "Mr. Erquiaga." I knocked on the window glass to get his attention, but he pointedly did not respond. I stood and called out to him. "Boni."

  The guard came for Boni. He locked Boni's free hand to the chain at his waist, pulled him up by his elbows, and turned him toward the door. Boni would not look at me.

  I put my open palm against the glass.

  The guard picked up the handset. "Enriquez says he don't want to talk to you anymore."

  On my way out I stopped to make a deposit in Boni's commissary account. As I handed cash to the clerk, I said, "Please make sure this is credited to Bonifache Erquiaga, and not some guy named Enriquez."

  "Uh-huh." The clerk gave me a little smile that looked more like a sneer as he slid me a receipt. "The thing is, there used to be a cop on the job named Erquiaga. The guards in here? They don't like to be reminded where he ended up."

  I took the receipt and turned to walk away.

  "Too bad about Mike Flint, miss," the clerk said, sounding sincere. "I'm sorry for your loss."

  "Thank you," I said. "So am I."

  Chapter 4

  I walked out of the prison into the bright glare of late morning, head feeling leaden, eyes burning as if I had come out of a dark cave. There were too many disconnected bits and pieces of information, like free-floating helium balloons, and I couldn't seem to grasp any of their strings to reel them in. I knew something of substance would emerge when, if, I got the pieces put together. I just hadn't figured out yet how I was going to accomplish that.

  The car was hot. I turned on the engine, flipped the AC to high, took out my laptop, and began typing notes so that I would have a complete if not exactly contemporaneous record of everything Boni and I had said, as well as a record of what I had seen. I wanted Boni on camera, but getting permission from both Boni and the state to film inside Corcoran would take some major effort. We would probably have to settle for the outside shots I took as I walked back to the car and fill with some file footage, add a voiceover narration; illusion is the magic of film.

  I called Guido and filled him in on my proposal for the new project. He had some qualms about the subject being too personal, and wondered whether I was ready to take it on, but he agreed that the topic could be good. The next person to sell would be our executive producer, Lana Howard. Guido and I talked about the pitch we would give her.

  Lana is generally supportive of the projects we bring her. But I always have to remember that she is also a functionary of the network, and can be a very tough sell. Our pitch needed to beguile her at the same time it made clear how the project met network objectives, meaning viewer share, sufficiently well that we would get approval, which would translate to time and a budget from the people she reported to. A brief potent pitch--an overview and a hook--were all that Lana usually needed before she gave the go-ahead, but that short teaser could be the most difficult aspect of a project. It's alleged that Mark Twain said that the reason Huckleberry Finn was such a long book was that he didn't have time to write a short one. I fully understood what he meant.

  As Guido and I talked, I began to see, as I do sometimes, an entire film in the rough begin to play, even though we had very little content yet for the script. I could hear in Guido's voice a rising excitement, an enthusiasm that fed my own. Neither of us had any idea where the project would take us, or what we would know at the end. Addressing the puzzle was the point.

  We decided that I would rough out a five-minute presentation for Lana, and he would begin to comb archival footage and shop through our stock of LA background footage--B-roll--for a quick preview of the visual possibilities. We agreed on the tone, the mood, we wanted to convey. When we ended the call, I felt more confident about meeting with Lana.

  Lana was in a teleconference with the studio
biggies in New York when I called. Her assistant told me that Lana's day was packed, but that she could schedule me for six that evening.

  The next call was to Harry Young, the patrol sergeant from Central Division who had told Mike that he had a line on the whereabouts of Nelda Ruiz. Mike had left me Harry's contact numbers, home, cell, work.

  I knew Harry Young. He was a friend of Mike's from the old days before the federal consent decree, when there weren't so many shackles on LA law enforcement. Harry was currently a patrol sergeant working morning watch, the overnight shift when stuff goes down, out of LAPD's Central Division, the downtown beat. I looked at my watch. It wasn't yet noon. Because morning watch signs in at ten at night and signs out at about seven the next morning, it was way too early to talk to Harry. But I called his house anyway to leave a message that I wanted to speak with him.

  Harry's wife, Yuen, after offering condolences, told me it would be best to try again at about four when Harry got up for dinner with his family. She took down my contact numbers and promised that Harry would be waiting for my call later.

  It was after two when I arrived back at the studio. I found Guido cloistered at an editing bay. He had cobbled together shots from the video archives, scenes of the inner city where Jesus Ramon lived his short life, and was putting together a rough but provocative draft disc to accompany my narrative spiel. Bless his heart, he was even adding a music track, a discordant sort of alternative Latino hip-hop.

  I pulled up a chair next to Guido's, opened my laptop on the counter beside his console, and wrote the narrative. When I left him at four to go talk with Harry, he was busily synching son et lumiere, the sound and light.

  I dumped my files and computer on the little sofa in my office, sat down beside them, and called Harry Young.

  Harry came to fatherhood late in life, and cherishes the hurly-burly of kids as if all that noise and messiness is a gift, something like season tickets to the circus. When I called back, Yuen summoned him in from the backyard where he was practicing tae kwon do with his eight-year-old son.

  "Harry," I said, "it's Maggie."

  "Glad you called. Sorry I missed the service, honey, but someone had to cover the shift and I drew the short straw." He sounded out of breath. "I am so sorry for your loss. Hell, Mike and I go back a long, long way. One of a kind, that guy. I'll miss him."

  "We'll all miss him," I said. "Thank you for your concern."

  "What can I do for you, Maggie?" I heard him take a drag on a cigarette; Harry was old school.

  "Mike asked me to look into Jesus Ramon," I said. "He left me a note that you had a possible line on the whereabouts of Nelda Ruiz."

  "Yeah. I might," he said. "When Mike heard Nelda was paroled, he asked me to keep a lookout for her, he wanted to talk to her. So, I did, as a favor to an old friend. Started from scratch, though. The address Nelda gave the parole board was a house she inherited from her grandfather. But the house got sold a long time ago to pay her lawyer, so that was a dead end.

  "Then about a week ago..." I heard the click and flame of a lighter, and Harry's first drag on a fresh cigarette. "About a week ago, one of my patrolmen brought in a strawberry--you know, trades sex for crack--on a solicitation charge. I saw she was in Frontera during the same time as Nelda Ruiz, paroled out about three months ago. So I asked if she knew Nelda and might know where she is now.

  "I know if she's a user, then she's a scam artist, too. She wants to know if there's reward money for talking," Harry said. "I told her there is no reward except heaven, but that I'd step forward for her next time she got brought in on charges if she gave me something useful."

  "She can get you to Nelda?"

  "Indirectly. Maybe," he said. "She told me where one of Nelda's old cellmates is working. Someone she thinks Nelda would stay in touch with. The name checks out; another Frontera alum, and she was Nelda's roommate for a while."

  "Can you get me to her?" I asked.

  "You?" He paused. "Get you to her?"

  "Yes, me."

  "Hmm." Another pause. "You doing this for TV or for you or for Mike?"

  "Maybe all the above," I said.

  Harry exhaled, and took some time doing it. "Mike ever talk to you about Jesus Ramon?"

  "Of course he did. Often."

  "I don't know what to do here. Like I said, Mike and I go back a long way. Now that he's out of the picture, I don't want to get his name dragged through the mud again. Not when he can't defend himself."

  "What if we can clear his name?" I said.

  "I know you cared a lot for him, honey," Harry said, obviously uncomfortable. "But..."

  "How close are you to Nelda?" I asked, changing the trend of the conversation away from Mike and me. "If you find her, will she talk to you?"

  "We go back a long way." He took some time to think, and I waited for him. "I first brought her in a dozen, fifteen years ago. She was just a kid."

  "All the time you've known her, what's the longest she stayed off drugs?"

  "Outside of the slam?" he said. "A day, maybe two."

  "Chances of her long term-survival out there?"

  "Zip to none."

  "I have to talk to her, Harry. She was a witness the day Jesus got into Mike's backseat."

  "All right, honey." Harry seemed to have set aside some qualms. "I'll make some calls, set something up."

  "Tonight?" I asked.

  He paused. "Yeah," he drawled, taking more time to think. "I can sign you in as a ride-along. While we're on routine patrol, there's no reason we can't drop in on Nelda Ruiz's old cellmate."

  He told me to meet him at Central Station at ten, in time for roll call.

  "Maggie," he said in parting, "I'm doing this for Mike. Don't let me down."

  "I won't," I said. "I'm doing this for Mike, too."

  • • •

  At ten minutes to six when Guido walked me to the elevator, we were fairly confident about our show-and-tell; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes gleamed with anticipation. He wished me good luck as I punched the button for the executive office floor atop the network's Burbank studio. Guido and Lana had some issues, so for the sales job, I was flying solo.

  "Maggie." Lana greeted me with a quick hug and a pair of air kisses as she ushered me into her office. Lana thrives on high intensity. That evening she seemed unusually nervy, which ratcheted up my own already spinning levels of adrenaline.

  "I've been damned worried about you, Maggie," Lana said, nailing me with a practiced sincerity. "And I'm damned surprised to see you here today. My dearest, it's so soon."

  "I need to work through what's happened in my own way," I said. "I'd rather be here, busy, than shopping for black dresses, if you know what I mean."

  "Yes. I do." She studied me, then took and released a great, dramatic breath, the signal that it was time to get down to business.

  She said, "You've no idea how happy I am that you feel up to work. Network is pushing me to get the fall schedule set. I need to pitch them a series of Maggie MacGowen films that will knock their silk shorts off. And I need you to give me the hook they can hang their passion onto. Tell me that what you have for me is fabulous."

  "I think you'll like this project," I said. "I do."

  "Excellent." Lana rang her assistant and told her to hold all calls. As she walked me toward her conference table she began to deliver her own pitch. "I'm in New York all next week with the programming people. They want a full two-hour Maggie MacGowen production they can broadcast during May sweeps week, something blockbuster. It's that hook for fall you need. Tell me you have it."

  "Lana," I said, with more confidence than I felt, cringing at the phoniness in my voice, "have I ever let you down?"

  "Something to drink?" She smiled at me, her eyes bright, remembering the thrill and tension of the film process, perhaps, or expectant about the next one. Lana loves her work. Or was it fear that made her so bright? "Water?"

  "Thanks," I said.

  Lana walked over to the bar
on the far side of her office and began fussing with ice cubes, crystal glasses, and bottles of fizzy Pellegrino water.

  Lana's office is a shrine to her status at the network, furnished to look hip, young, powerful: everything leather, granite, competence and chrome. One entire wall is window. Early evening sun poured in, bounced off every hard, polished surface in the huge room. I reached for the console panel on the conference table and pushed the button that closed her drapes, leaving the room washed in soft gray light, taking the harsh reflected glare off her row of TV monitors, off the row of Emmy statuettes hovering on a shelf above them.

  I slipped Guido's video disc into the player on the table, waited for the "ready" light to appear in the corner of a monitor across the room, and pushed more buttons. Suddenly, Boni appeared onscreen, shot during his arraignment two years ago. On Pause, his bright orange county-jail jumpsuit glowed hot in contrast to the gloom.

  "Want a lime slice in your water?" Lana had a paring knife in her hand. "Doesn't add calories or carbs."

  "Please," I said. I imagined Guido rolling his eyes.

  Lana, in common with many women in her industry, is anorectic. Or maybe it's bulimic. Or maybe it's both. Intentionally, she is as narrow and as curveless as a pencil. Indeed, backlit against the window, she seemed no wider than one of the pleats in her filmy drapes. Guido Patrini, of the Sicilian Patrinis, son of Mama Gina, neither understands nor fully trusts people who choose not to eat. But that was only one of the issues between him and Lana. I was often the buffer between them.

  "Hmmm, very photogenic," Lana said as she studied Boni's frozen image; Guido had put it in only as a color test. She set tinkling glasses on coasters in front of us, and then took her usual seat at the head of the long table.

  As always, while she listened to a pitch, Lana rested her chin on tented fingers and gave away no reactions by either expression or gesture. Now and then she wrote something on the yellow legal pad in front of her. Otherwise she was a sphinx.

  "When you're ready," she said, glancing up, pen poised.