Kill Signal, page 7
part #1 of Marko Bell Series
She crawled along in the afternoon traffic and thought about what Looman had said.
Things had just gotten more complicated. The suicide of Baxter Fielding’s sister and the murder of the newspaper reporter stubbornly looking into the Fielding murders meant there were two more deaths connected to the Fieldings.
Karen didn’t know what it all meant, and she was beginning to feel overwhelmed by all the strands that seemed to be connected and demanded attention.
And she knew that Danny Cannon was preparing another hit piece on her for the next day’s Chronicle.
She took a deep breath and told herself to relax. Just collect the facts, one at a time.
She headed toward the Hall of Justice to learn more about Jean Fielding’s suicide.
Chapter 10
To Frank Flanagan, the second-term mayor of San Francisco, it seemed as though Wayne Bordelay derived a sick pleasure from making others uncomfortable.
Sorry, chief, Wayne had said on the phone when the mayor balked at an in-person meeting. I want you to look me in the eye. I want you to show me you appreciate what I’m doing for you.
They decided to meet in San Luis Obispo, roughly halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Wayne Bordelay had lived since resigning from the SFPD in disgrace two years before. The bar was several blocks away from the tourist district, where it was unlikely anyone would recognize them.
The mayor arrived first, wearing dark glasses and a baseball hat just to be sure. He sipped a beer while he waited. At the appointed hour, Wayne walked into the nearly empty bar and sat down next to him. Frank forced himself not to turn and look at him. He didn’t like looking at Wayne Bordelay.
“Were there any complications?” Frank asked.
“I barely had to bump him,” Wayne said, his voice muffled from the disfigurement. “He went over the cliff like a ball rolling off the edge of the table. Only thing is he was having drinks earlier in the evening with Maurice Weathersby and Rafe Strauss. His last drinks, as it turned out.”
Frank couldn’t resist the terrible urge to turn and look at him. Wayne’s lupine features hadn’t changed in the two years since their last meeting, though his hair, slicked back as always, was jet black now. Neither had his face changed. It was stretched tight and his eyes bulged behind his dark glasses.
Frank never asked Wayne about it, but he’d heard stories. In the First Gulf War, according to one of those stories, Wayne was interrogating suspected terrorists. In a dank room in Qatar, an Iraqi managed to upturn a vat of battery acid that Wayne had used to slowly melt the Iraqi’s skin for the previous 14 hours. Enough of it caught Wayne to permanently disfigure him.
Frank felt distaste at having to work with the likes of Wayne Bordelay, but he couldn’t deny that Wayne was exactly the kind of man The Brotherhood needed. And so far, he had performed the necessary work admirably.
“The connection to Weathersby might raise questions.”
“Don’t worry about it, Chief.”
Frank looked around to make sure no one was close enough to hear them. “I told you not to call me that.”
“Old habits die hard.”
“How can you be sure there’s nothing to worry about?”
“Nobody will make it as a homicide,” Wayne said. “Besides, consider the jurisdiction. Half Moon Bay police. Not exactly talking about Scotland Yard here.”
That was true. There might be questions, but they had handled tougher situations in the past. Any problems that arose would be dealt with, Frank reminded himself. It had been like that since 1969.
Wayne lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “There’s a cop on the case now,” he said, exhaling a long plume of smoke into the dim bar. “A little birdy convinced her it was in her best interests to dig where Cannon was digging. So there’s two new jobs now. If your boss is interested.”
Frank slumped on his barstool. He felt things getting away from him now, and the worst part was he was flying blind.
“I told you they call me. I don’t call them. I don’t even know who they are.”
“Sure, chief, sure.”
“You think I wanted this? That I wouldn’t get out if I could?”
“You must have committed a sin in another life, chief.”
Frank stiffened, thinking back to 1969. Frank had the unsettling realization that he had always underestimated Wayne, thinking that his amorality meant he was stupid, when in fact psychopaths were often extremely intelligent.
“A little birdy,” Frank said, angry now. Angry for allowing himself to get in this position in the first place, passing along ugly jobs to this freak next to him, yet unable to extricate himself from the situation.
They knew who he was, but he didn’t know who they were. And if he ever angered them, or failed to carry out the duties they gave him, he knew they would reveal all his secrets. It would be over for him.
Frank found the whole situation galling.
On the surface, everything was going well for him. He was a popular mayor and the had taken all the right steps to set himself up for bigger things. Yet here he was, still paying off a debt to people he didn’t know, for things that happened decades before.
“You did it,” he spat, turning to Bordelay, his anger overtaking his disgust. “You’re the little birdy. You’re just trying to sow chaos. You think that the more problems you cause, the more in demand you’ll be. Well let me tell you something, don’t play with these people.”
“I’m not playing with anyone, chief,” Wayne said, rising from his stool. “But let them know my price just doubled. Fifty thou per job.”
“Are you crazy? I can’t tell them you’re raising your price. We don’t get to call the shots here.”
“Doesn’t much matter to me whose pocket it comes from, chief. You can make up the difference.”
Wayne started to walk away. Before he reached the door, he turned. “And remember, chief: I ain’t got nothing to lose. My career already ended, remember? You, on the other hand…”
Wayne chuckled and shook his head. He turned and walked out of the bar.
Frank felt terror seize his gut as he realized there was no way out. He had to do what they wanted. Anything less than that, and his career — and his life — were over.
Chapter 11
Walter followed Marko out of Weathersby’s office and they rode the elevator down to the parking garage without a word. When they were in the car, weaving slowly through downtown traffic, Walter spoke.
“Marko, we alright?”
Marko was looking straight ahead, his hands in the ten-and-two position on the steering wheel. “What are you talking about, Walter?”
“I want to say something to you.”
“So say it.”
“I wasn’t partners with Wayne Bordelay when La Traviata happened, hadn’t been for six months. Six months, Marko.”
“I know the chronology.”
“So these are the things I want to say to you. I hated being Bordelay’s partner. He was scum. But I didn’t know about him getting a cut of Tommy Phong’s business, not until later. And I sure as hell wasn’t part of it. I’m swearing this on my mother, Marko.”
Marko thought about the rumors while he was lying in bed sometimes. They settled at the back of his brain, refusing to go away.
Bordelay was on the take for a year or more. Walter knew, and Bordelay would have sliced off part of the cut for Walter. It was his partner.
Partners know.
Marko knew that if he never learned anything conclusive, he would go to his grave suspecting his partner was on the take. Marko felt it every time Walter showed up for work in an expensive leather jacket, he felt it when Walter traded in his Toyota Camry and bought a Lexus, he felt it when Walter dropped ten grand on the Super Bowl.
And if the whispers were true, that made it a direct line – Walter could have stopped Bordelay, he could have stopped Tommy Phong, and La Traviata would have never happened. It would have never fucking happened.
The first time Marko Bell laid his head on a pillow in the United States, he cried himself to sleep.
He was thirteen; his name was still Marko Belic. He had come to live with his mother’s brother, Uncle Tony, after his parents were killed.
Marko Belic, thirteen years old, witnessed his mother and father’s murder. Saw them hanged from the beams in the ceiling. Later he learned that the wild, brutal men who invaded his family’s home near the coastal city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, were Serbian paramilitary. The murderers let him live. Marko later learned it was a common war-crimes tactic.
Let one person live to tell the tale.
Uncle Tony’s home was in the Excelsior, a modest working-class neighborhood on the city’s southern edge. It was nothing like the postcard pictures of San Francisco that Marko had seen. The stucco houses stacked up against each other and the concrete that seemed to take the place of grass made Marko long for home. But there was no home anymore. His parents were gone. His life was gone.
When he was 17, he fell in love with a girl in his high school, Amanda Pemberton. For a time he thought she could somehow save him from the terrible visions that haunted him. But her mother had big dreams for her daughter and didn’t approve of Marko, an orphaned foreigner who was trying to shed his accent. A lost boy who carried a whiff of tragedy. They dated for two years before Amanda broke it off.
In college he met Donna Molloy. He had planned to go to community college until Uncle Tony came up with a stash of money he said he had been saving. The University of San Francisco had a good criminal justice program, and Marko had decided he wanted to be a policeman, so he attended the Catholic private school. Donna was majoring in child psychology, planning to be a teacher. She was in one of Marko’s undergrad classes.
He found himself looking forward to class each day just so he could sit a row or two behind her and cast glances at her. It took him a few weeks to summon the courage to sit next to her and try to talk to her. He was surprised to find that she was friendly and actually seemed to enjoy talking to him.
Immediately they had an easy rapport that just felt right. She became his first girlfriend since Amanda, and he forced himself not to view her as a savior, as someone who would blot out his past and make the pain go away.
That was too much pressure to put on anyone. It had been his mistake with Amanda, and he vowed he wouldn’t make the same mistake with Donna.
He would take it slow, not expect too much or push for an all-consuming intimacy that would fill the void at the center of him. Taking it slow would create less pressure on Donna, and it would help him protect himself in case it didn’t work out.
But as weeks turned into months, he realized this was the real deal. She loved him and wanted to be with him. There was no meddlesome mother, no teenage uncertainty. She was a woman, a smart, beautiful woman, and she knew what she wanted. She wanted him.
It took him a long time to accept it. He was sure that the rug would be pulled out from under him at any time. But it was real. She was real.
Marko graduated USF, went to the police academy and became a cop. Donna went to graduate school. They married and were happy together. They talked about having kids once Donna graduated. They talked about where they would live. What kind of parents they’d be. How they would grow old together.
She liked stopping at La Traviata on her way to their nearby apartment, on Telegraph Hill, to do a little studying while she waited for Marko to get off work and pick her up, a little after eleven.
This was a memory that would stay with Marko for the rest of his life – him stopping his old Camaro outside the coffeeshop and looking in, the inside of the place brightly lit, and seeing Donna at her usual table in the back, looking down at one of her books with a studious expression, the eraser end of her pencil at her lips.
Marko would wait just a moment, drinking her in, before giving his car horn a quick hit with a closed fist. She’d look up, start gathering her books, and take a last gulp of her decaf latte before walking out to meet him.
She didn’t go there every single night. Maybe three nights out of five. That was the thing – she’d call him each night, usually around nine, and let him know where she was. “I’m at Traviata,” she’d say, and Marko knew that meant she was having a hard time in one of her classes and needed to spend an hour or two reviewing her lectures. The other times she’d just say, “I’m home,” and Marko knew he’d see her sitting on the couch when he walked in, wearing her sweats and a tee-shirt, watching the local news. “Hi, hon,” she’d say, and he’d walk over and give her a kiss, acting nonchalant even though the profound thrill of having her in his life never faded.
On the night that changed everything, she called him around nine, and she said, “I’m at Traviata.” But he couldn’t remember much else about what she said, what they talked about. Marko spent entire sleepless nights after that trying to remember every second, every word, of their last conversation, but it was lost to him, and it was slowly killing him.
He remembered fragments. She had said something like, “I’m drowning in my Quantitative Ed Research seminar,” and he said something like, “You’ll nail it, babe. You always do.” She said she had seen their neighbor, Laura Soo, at the salad place near campus. He responded with a distracted, “Really?” He told her he was tired.
They had talked for quite a few minutes – six, Marko found out later when he obtained their phone records, to see the proof of that call in black and white. He wanted to freeze their last conversation somewhere, in perfect memory, so he could call it up when he needed it, every inflection, every throat-clearing, every bored little sigh that meant, no pressure, they were alive and in love and planned to have a hundred thousand of these kinds of conversations, for the rest of their lives.
There was just so much he couldn’t remember.
The part that got Marko was the sheer stupidity of it, the randomness: Donna probably would have been home that night if she hadn’t been mugged the week before, after getting off the bus. In the days since, she’d gone to Traviata almost every night, preferring Marko pick her up to making the long walk alone up Pacific Street to their apartment.
She was at Traviata on an unseasonably warm night in June because she had her backpack stolen.
And now she was gone. Never coming back. Like God was saying, Sorry, Marko, but all those dreams you had, of kids and grandkids and you and Donna growing old together and taking vacations and reading little bits in the newspaper to each other at the breakfast table for the next 40 years? Of basking in the love of the woman who saved your life? Not gonna happen. Better luck next time.
Marko dropped off Walter at the Hall of Justice and drove. He turned left off the Embarcadero and felt himself driving familiar streets – up Broadway, right on Columbus, right on Vallejo, left on Green. A violet summer dusk was falling and the streets pulsed, working people getting off buses and walking home at the end of their day, early dinner arrivals circling in their cars, looking for parking spots. Sidewalk cafes filled with men and women laughing, ordering drinks. North Beach and night falling.
He stopped at a bus zone outside 714 Pacific Street. Marko and Donna’s old apartment. The lights were off on the second floor. He didn’t know who lived there now.
Marko was startled by a patrol car pulling up alongside him, and he saw a cop about to come down on him for parking in a bus zone. The cop recognized Marko and hurried along, sensing a stakeout and afraid of blowing his cover.
Marko thought of how he used to love the sight of police cruisers, loved the big Crown Vics and what they represented, street cops out keeping peace. Now in each cruiser he saw Wayne Bordelay. For a split second.
About the length of time Marko prayed it took Donna to die.
On the foggy night in July, two years ago, six Vietnamese gang members walked into La Traviata and started harassing patrons, sweeping cups of cappuccino and plates of pie off of round little wooden tables with the ends of their semi-automatic rifles. They must have been there for close to a minute, because one of the customers, a young woman who just moved to town from Los Angeles, had time to call 9-1-1 on her cell phone, get a dispatcher on the line, whisper into it, the unintelligible shouts in the background sounding like mayhem ready to burst, “La Traviata, in North Beach, these guys have guns, please …” before the shooting and the screaming started and the line went dead.
Two hours later, cops tracked Phu Duc Phong, a.k.a. Tommy Phong, to his girlfriend’s house in the Visitacion Valley housing projects. They had him cold, a ballistics match on the weapon found in the trunk of his car.
Informants told cops Phong and his crew had picked a few shakedown targets — North Beach businesses owned by Asian immigrants less likely to squawk. The informants said Phong and his boys were planning to kill a cop who was skimming their shakedown profits. Internal Affairs got involved -- none of the North Beach beat cops was a match.
But Phong couldn’t stop talking. Phong said he had a deal – the cop took 10 percent of what the gang took from the coffee shops, and in return the cop let Phong deal heroin in Chinatown. Phong played it coy, keeping names out of it in some half-assed plea-bargain attempt.
Internal Affairs leaned on him: Give up the name. Phong gave dribs and drabs. A tall cop. Chinatown beat. A mustache. Weird face, like a burned wolf. It started to come together.
Wayne Bordelay.
Bordelay was a sergeant out of Central Station who had risen quickly through the ranks by getting in good with department brass. He was considered a department politician and an up-and-comer. He had a small coterie of rogue cops that owed their jobs to him. He struck most other cops as being wound too tight and a backstabber.
The newspapers had a field day. Bordelay denied everything. He lawyered up. The lawyer pointed out there was no evidence other than the word of a vicious thug.
