Slim to None, page 23
“There a problem?”
Underwood shrugged. “Not really. Some Saudi students at UCLA think they’re being targeted for harassment by cops and rednecks.”
“You get involved in that kind of thing? Sounds like small potatoes next to the other stuff on your plate, keeping the city safe from terrorists and suicide bombers and all.”
“Well, it’s something we have to keep an eye on. You never know whether these little problems might blow up—not literally, hopefully. Mind you, some people see a radical in every Arab exchange student—a potential terrorist just waiting for the chance to blow up Disneyland. Takes a certain amount of delicacy to deal with the consulates, too. I’d delegate, but I don’t have anyone with the chops to handle these folks. I would have,” Underwood added, “if you’d come back to the department and work for me like I keep asking. I’ve got the budget, I just can’t find the people I need.”
“I don’t know. There are days when I’m tempted, but—”
“But mercenary work pays better?”
“Ouch!”
“Sorry. I’m just grumpy. I’m understaffed and I could really use you.”
“It’s tempting, Val, but I’ve kind of gotten used to freelancing. God knows, there’s not a lot of security in it, and some jobs are boring as hell, but I like the variety.”
“And the money.”
Hannah grimaced. “It’s not quite as lucrative since that fiasco in Iraq, but I do okay. Although at this point,” she added, “my original reason for doing this is pretty much a lost cause.”
“You’ve given up on getting Gabe back?”
Hannah exhaled heavily. “I’m just trying to be realistic. Realistically, I have to resign myself to the fact that it’s probably not gonna happen. He’s settled, he’s happy, he’s doing well in that school they’ve got him in. How can I throw a wrench in everything now?”
“It’s not right. You’re his mother.”
“Yeah, but that’s exactly why I want what’s best for him. And much as I hate to admit it, Christie’s turned out to be a pretty decent person. Not your stereotypical wicked stepmother. Oh, by the way, guess what? She’s preggers. Gabe’s going to have a little brother or sister.”
“Ow! That hurts. You okay about it?”
“No, but it’s none of my business and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it anyway. No reason why Cal shouldn’t have other kids with her. God knows, it’s not like I want him back.”
“Still, it’s gotta feel a little weird.”
“Yeah, it does. But,” Hannah added, spearing another piece of barbecued pork bun, “I can always drown my sorrows in dim sum. Are you sure you won’t have some of this?”
“No, you just go ahead. Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit over here and drool. Nobody will notice. At my age, they think it’s just senility.”
“Yeah, senile like a fox. I want to be you when I grow up. As it is, I could despise you for your life, but then who’d be my friend?”
Underwood laughed. “Oh, poor, pitiful you. Anyway, you just want me around to do your grunt work.”
Hannah brightened. “Hey, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. You’ll do it?”
The older woman sighed. “I suppose.” She held out her hand. “Give me the number.”
Hannah put down her chopsticks and rummaged in her jeans pocket for the piece of paper on which she’d scribbled the license plate number and other details of the car.
The basketball game two nights earlier had had only minutes left to play when she’d spotted the white-haired man in the skybox across the floor. By the time she calculated its exact location and then took her leave of Gabe and the rest of the birthday party, she barely had time to make it around to that section of the arena before the sellout crowd began to leave ahead of the final buzzer. A security guard had blocked her path when she tried to go up to the restricted skybox level, so she stationed herself behind a pillar near the descending escalators and prayed her quarry didn’t decide to make a circuit of the floor on his level before descending to the ground level exits. If she missed him there, the odds were slim to none that she’d ever pick up his trail again.
“So who is this guy really?” Underwood asked as Hannah handed over the details of the BMW in which he’d driven off.
“I don’t know his name—that’s the problem. I ran into him two years ago on that job in Iraq when that kid got killed. He was the shooter.”
“That would be the job where you guys were taking a stolen car across the border when all hell broke loose?”
“It was ‘liberated’, not stolen. I told you, the owner was one of Saddam’s ugly, kleptomaniac sons. He was dead at that point, so it wasn’t like he was going to miss it, and the car was slated to be turned into junk anyway.”
“Hmm…”
“Anyway, this guy I spotted at the Staples Center? He’s the one who killed Oz Nuñez, I’m almost certain.”
“Almost certain.”
“Ninety percent. Things were pretty hairy when that disaster at the border went down, but I wouldn’t forget that face and those cold blue eyes, believe me.”
“So your killer was American.”
“He sure as hell wasn’t an Arab. Beyond that, I haven’t got a clue. That’s why I want to take a closer look at this guy. Check him out, make sure it really is him. I tailed him on foot to the parking lot the other night, but there was no way to get back to my car in time to follow him out of there.”
“And if I come up with a name and a home address? You’re going to do exactly what with it?”
“A little surveillance, that’s all. If it is him, try to figure out what he’s up to now.”
“Do I look like I was born yesterday, little girl? I know you. If this is the guy who killed your friend, there’s no way you’re going to walk away. And there’s probably no way you can pursue him legally, you know that. Aside from anything else, your friend’s killing didn’t happen on U.S. soil, so there’s the jurisdictional problem. Plus, you guys were driving a ‘liberated’ vehicle at the time. This guy might argue that he was engaged in a legitimate police action to recover it and bring you guys in. So what options does that leave? You think you’re Rambo? You’re just gonna take him out on the streets of L.A.? I don’t think so.”
“No, I know that, Val. I’m not stupid. In the first place, I’ve got a kid. I’m not about to get sent away on a murder rap. And in the second place, I wouldn’t do that to you, not after you’re going out of your way to help me out on this.”
Underwood shook her head. “This is wrong on so many levels. We’re not supposed to be running plates on nonpolice business, you know that.”
“Yeah, but I also know everybody does it anyway. Look, Val, I promise, I just want to check the guy out. If he is who I think he is, then what are the odds he’s suddenly turned into a saint? And what’s he doing here? Maybe he’s into drugs or gun-running or something. Who knows? Maybe he’s a terrorist. If so, I’ll pass the information on and you can take a look at him yourself.”
“I don’t know.”
“Please, Val, just get me the plate information. I have to follow up. Oz Nuñez was a really good guy, a husband and a father. I owe him at least this.”
Underwood studied Hannah for a moment, and then, with a resigned sigh, she nodded.
CHAPTER
30
Monday, January 30, 2005
Pico Hills Cemetery, Los Angeles
The whole business of death and dying seemed incongruous in the City of Angels. By day, at least. Nighttime was another story, Russo thought, but funerals rarely took place at night.
By day, L.A. was always sunny. Vast parts of the city were so damn picture perfect that sometimes you had to wonder if somebody had declared ugly a crime. Palm trees swayed in ocean breezes, lining boulevards that seemed populated by nothing but the gorgeous, the tanned and the toned. Southern California was the kind of place where Disney could invent a pristine Main Street, U.S.A. that had never existed in the real world yet still evoked nostalgia in millions of visitors—like they’d actually grown up on a street like that. Dying in a place so chirpy seemed like bad form. Funerals were positively surreal.
Russo studied the drawn, somber faces around Billy Chen’s gravesite. These were not the Botoxed beautiful people. These were just hardworking, ordinary folks—Asian, black, white, Hispanic—trying to get by and raise their families, only to be bitch-slapped by the shock of sudden, ugly death.
The burnished mahogany casket, gleaming in the warm afternoon sun, rested on black canvas straps stretched taut across an open pit. Off to one side, a sheet of bright green felt discreetly covered the dirt that would fill the hole once everyone had departed. The cloying scent of a dozen floral tributes was overpowering. It was a wonder anybody could stand to be around a single posy after something like this.
Russo felt exhausted and wired taut at the same time. He hadn’t slept more than an hour at a stretch since his partner’s death. Neither, he sensed, had Andrea Chen. The young widow’s tearstained face was ashen and strained. Billy had turned thirty-one just three days before he was gunned down in Compton. His wife, Russo had learned since that godawful night in the King-Drew E.R., had just found out she was pregnant—maybe carrying the son Billy had been hoping for to balance out their family, an ally for him in a household of females. Had Billy known about the baby before he died? Russo had no idea.
As the priest droned on about there being a season for everything—a time to reap, a time to sow, etc. etc.—Russo bristled. What a crock. How could death as premature as this fit into any grand scheme of things? He’d been raised Roman Catholic and so, it seemed, had his late partner. These days, though, religion was a mystery to Russo, and not the sacred kind, either. The irritating kind. When he’d lost his wife and child, he’d found no comfort in its rituals. If anything, the prayers and platitudes offered up during their joint funeral service had only fed his rage. If he’d made uneasy peace with some of the demons that haunted him since Sarah and Juliana died, God was still on his hit list. Only his fury with himself exceeded his wrath at the deity.
He glanced over at Andrea Chen. At least she would be spared that kind of self-loathing. The innocent have no need to reproach themselves.
Although Russo had turned his back on the faith of his forebears, the Chens had apparently been active members of the parish in Monterey Park where they’d lived before their recent move to a bigger house in Riverside. Their family church was nowhere near large enough for the funeral of a police officer killed in the line of duty, however, so Billy’s memorial had been held at the newly-built Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown L.A. Police forces from one end of the country to the other sent representatives to honor a fallen fellow officer. Members of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and LAPD, both deputies and support staff, turned out in force. The mayor, the sheriff, a city council member and Russo himself spoke at the service presided over by the local archbishop, as did two members of Billy’s large extended family. Afterwards, a full-dress honor guard complete with pipes, drums and sixty motorcycle police outriders accompanied the casket to its final resting place in the Pico Hills Memorial Park and Cemetery.
Russo was one of six pallbearers.
“Billy was so pleased to be training with you,” Andrea had said when she called to ask him. “He said you were the best detective in the department.”
“I don’t know about that, but I was proud to work with him. He was a good man and a very good police officer.”
“He said you were tough but fair. And you know,” she added, her voice catching, “Chinese tradition says the blessings of the deceased are bestowed on his pallbearers. Billy would want that for you.”
Standing next to the grave, Russo’s brain balked at the idea. He didn’t deserve blessings from Billy Chen or anyone else. It was sure no blessing for the kid to have drawn him as a training officer.
According to Lieutenant Halloran, preliminary results of the investigation into the disaster in Compton suggested the helicopter had played a role that night, flushing out the shooter too soon, before SWAT backup was in position. What Halloran didn’t know was how much Mike Tillman, the chopper pilot, hated Russo’s guts.
Tillman and Finn Brophy, the detective in charge of Russo’s officer-involved shooting investigation, were best friends. Finn Brophy and his wife, also a cop, had been separated the night he walked in on Russo and her going at it in the bedroom at someone’s Christmas party. It had been about a year after Sarah and the baby died, a time when Russo was running right off the rails. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember why, much less how, he’d ended up in that bedroom. Now, he couldn’t shake the guilty feeling that if it hadn’t been for his stupidity and for Tillman’s ongoing pissy mood over the cuckolding of his buddy, Billy Chen might still be alive today.
The gravesite was situated on one of the highest hilltops in the rolling cemetery. “Better feng shui,” Andrea had said when she called about the funeral arrangements. “Billy and his folks are ABC—American-born Chinese—but his grandmother was born over in China. She’s kind of a weird mix of her missionary school up-bringing and the old traditions, so the service will be a Catholic mass, but we had to make sure the grave was on a hill to catch good spirits. Oh, and it can’t be facing west, either, because that’s supposed to be the direction of hell. Go figure.”
Now, as the service wound down, a police honor guard moved into position to fire a three-round volley of blanks to honor a fallen comrade. As they cocked and raised their weapons skyward, Russo’s eye caught a movement in a copse of trees in a depression below the hilltop. A figure stood half-hidden behind a live oak about fifty yards down the hill. It was a woman, African-American, heavyset and on the upside of forty, dressed in a dark blue skirt and flowing flowered jacket. Her hair was cropped short and big silver hoops dangled at her ears. She could easily have melded into the large, diverse group at the gravesite, but for some reason, she was holding herself apart. Still, there was no doubt in Russo’s mind that she’d come here expressly for this service. The guns fired and she winced. So did half the people there, but even accounting for the loud crack of the rifles, she seemed very nervous.
He was curious, but he lost sight of her as the salute ended, smoke and cordite wafting on the breeze. The crowd began to break up and withdraw, drifting downhill toward the long line of cars parked on the verges of the roadway that meandered through the cemetery.
“You heading over to the reception?”
Russo turned to Lou Halloran, who’d moved up beside him. “Yeah. You?”
The lieutenant nodded. “For a while. You need a lift over there?”
“No, I’ve got my car.”
“You’re okay to drive?”
“Lou—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, that’s right. ’Cause you’ve got blood work that says I’m sober, don’t you?”
“Would you just chill? I don’t need blood work. I just meant this is tough for you.”
“Tougher for Billy’s wife and family.”
Both men looked back to where Andrea Chen and other members of the family were talking with the priest. He handed her a rose from one of the sprays covering the casket and she began to weep.
Halloran nodded. “That’s a fact.”
The two men walked off a way to give the family more privacy.
“Look,” Russo said, “I know we’ve gotta go through the hoops on this OIS investigation, Lou, and I know I can’t go back on the street till it wraps.”
“It shouldn’t be long. Prelims are done and testimony’s been collected. I’ve got a meeting with the sheriff’s office later this week to go over what we’re going to release in the public report.”
“Are we taking a lot of flak?”
“No more than usual, at least as far as the community’s concerned. This ‘G Rider Jimmy’ character took three bullets, one from your gun, two from other cops at the scene, but the fact that he shot Chen and that boy and was a known gang member takes a lot of heat off the department. There were a couple of procedural mistakes, but they won’t necessarily come down to you. We’ve got at least two uniforms, plus the kid you were talking to about his brother’s shooting, all testifying they heard you tell the chopper to hold back until SWAT got there.”
“I should’ve made Chen wear his vest.”
“Yeah, and you need to wear yours, too. But the fact remains, this creep was a bad-ass piece of work with a long rap sheet. Turns out there’s a couple of other shootings he might have had a hand in over the past year. My biggest regret is that nobody took him out of commission long before this.”
Russo nodded. “Well, it’s good if there’s no political fallout, I guess. I need to get back to work, Lou, and sooner rather than later.”
