Blood Line (17 page)

It was also a bunch of election-year crap—cops learned before they were out of their probationary term that damn few, if any, civilians ever came to their aid. That’s why an Officer Down call took precedence over everything else: the down cop was always alone. But he didn’t tell that to Elizabeth; despite the good food and the snug sound of rain whipping at the balcony doors, she would rise to argue with his cynicism. Instead he told her about Roderick Hastings and Julio and what LaBelle had said.

“It’s corrupting an entire generation, Gabe. It’s horrible—it’s like AIDS, spreading and destroying. And it’s happening mostly among kids and young people.”

“It’s their choice, Liz. Nobody makes them use it or deal it.”

“Nobody except the greed of our society, and our callousness toward our own children.”

“That puts the blame everywhere and nowhere. Each one has to make his own choice—nobody can do it for them.”

“How do you make an eleven- or twelve-year-old kid understand that, Gabe? Especially one who lives in a world of fear and intimidation in his neighborhood, in his school, often in his own home. He’s going to join a gang for survival and he’s going to do what he sees the other members of that gang doing.” It genuinely hurt her to learn from Wager some of the uglier aspects of life in her city, and that pain was in her voice. “It’s a reversion to tribalism—our children are losing the sense that we’re a civilized people, that we should all live together in our city and that we can do it. Instead they form tribes whose purposes are defense from and attack against the other tribes. It’s a horrible vision of the death of a civilization, Gabe.”

Which meant that one of the first things to do was to make the world a little safer place—and that’s what Wager’s job was and what he was trying to accomplish. “Julio was not a user. The autopsy showed no traces in his system and no marks on his body. And I don’t believe he was in a gang or that he was dealing.”

“Then why was he killed?”

“Because he was some kind of threat to Hastings’s racket—or maybe Hastings believed he was.”

“What does Detective Golding think about that?”

“Golding doesn’t think.” Wager had told the man what he was working on, but Golding had only nodded earnestly and said what a good idea it was but that he would wait and see if anything turned up to corroborate Wager’s theory. “He wants somebody to step up and admit they shot Julio.”

“Have you asked Julio’s mother about it? About any possibility that he could have been involved?”

No, Wager hadn’t. It wasn’t something he would even mention to Aunt Louisa because he didn’t want the woman to know that Wager even held such a suspicion about her dead son. His own mother would be the same way: protective of Julio’s name and of her sister’s, angry at the idea of defaming the dead boy and his family with evil thoughts. All the warmth and appreciation that she had shown Wager for his having been thoughtful enough to call and warn her about his earlier wound would be blown away by his—in her eyes—acting like a cop and virtually accusing an innocent murdered child of a crime. “It’s not something she’d know about.” But who would? And where else might Julio have seen Hastings other than on the job out at DIA? Where had Julio gone, and who with, in the week or so before he was killed? Maybe Aunt Louisa knew that, at least.

F
OR A CHANGE
Fullerton was willing to talk over the telephone. “Jeez, I’d like to have you down for a cup of coffee, Gabe, and we could go over this in some detail. But I got to be in court in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s OK, Norm. No problem, really.”

“OK. Did you get a chance to look at those LA demographics yet?”

“Yeah—thanks for the info. A hundred thousand gang members, that’s a damned scary number.”

“And growing every day. They really have a recruiting program. They’re going after the nine- and ten-year-olds now. And those kids think they’re living in TV land, you know? Have no real idea at all about what killing somebody means.”

“Norm. I’ve got some names for you. Maybe you can give me some leads.” He repeated what he got from LaBelle yesterday afternoon. “Any sound familiar?”

“Rubberhead. That’s got to be James Sleppy. Last I heard he went down to Cañon City three or four years ago for assault with intent. Like his name says: crazy—beat his girlfriend half to death with a two-by-four because she drank his orange juice. She didn’t want to testify against him, but they were living together so the DA could arrest him under the domestic violence law without her complaint. I didn’t know he was out.”

“That wasn’t one of Kolagny’s cases, was it?”

“No. I don’t think so. I can look it up for you if you want me to.”

“Never mind.” Wager checked the spelling of Sleppy’s name so he could pull the man’s jacket.

“Don’t know which Wild Bill you want—there’s a lot of people around with that name. Ball Peen, now there’s a case: likes to work people over with a ball-peen hammer’s how he got his name. We thought we had him on murder one—splintered some guy’s head—but his lawyer got him off on self-defense. Heisterman.”

“Who?”

“Heisterman. A real shyster—works for the gangs. Gets big bucks for it, too. Son of a bitch is indirectly guilty of half a dozen murders that his clients committed after he got them off.”

“Heisterman?”

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I suspect I’m going to run across him.”

Attorney Dewing found it interesting, too. “He’s a lawyer for the gangs?”

“Fullerton knows him. Says he’s a favorite with the OGs who can afford him. Bloods or Crips, makes no difference as long as they pay.” Wager asked, “Could that be grounds to dismiss the suit?”

“No, Heisterman’s not the plaintiff. Neeley is. So I don’t see how it changes things materially. But it is interesting—it tells me more about the opposition. By the way, did I tell you Heisterman’s trying to move the trial date up? Wants to have it within three weeks.”

Three weeks. Wager felt his chest tighten. “No. You didn’t.”

“Claims that the current trial date is causing his client emotional damage that is aggravating to his severe physical injuries.”

“What kind of crap is that?”

“A crappy argument, but an argument: increasing mental stress caused by a sense of the injustice of his injuries, plus now an accusation that we’re trying to delay the trial.”

“Who’s delaying it?”

“Well, I did ask for a continuance. I want to see if we can find some other witnesses who might have been overlooked by the shooting team. If they missed one, they could have missed others.”

That was true, given Maholtz was the team commander. “Is that Heisterman’s rush? He’s afraid you might find someone?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. But he asked for the case to be moved up before I asked for the delay. The judge informed me when I petitioned him—in fact, he was just about to call me in to see if I had any objections to the plaintiff’s petition.”

“What the hell’s going on, Counselor?”

“You know what I know, Detective Wager.”

Which was scary because it wasn’t much. “So will the date be moved up?”

“I doubt it—with two conflicting petitions, the judge will probably let the original trial date stand.” Wager felt his breathing loosen with relief. “Unless one of us comes up with something a lot more compelling than our current arguments.”

If the fact that Heisterman was a gang lawyer was interesting for Dewing, it was bothersome for Wager. It bothered him that Neeley should have Heisterman for his lawyer both at his trial that he lost as well as now; it especially bothered him that Heisterman might have connections to Hastings through his defense of Ball Peen.

Sitting at the small worktable in the Records section, he combed through the thick files on James “Rubber-head” Sleppy and Ball Peen, whose mother, thirty-two years ago, had named her baby Kwame N’Kruma Mitchell. They, too, had Los Angeles backgrounds and a series of arrests and convictions that mirrored Hastings’s life. Which, Wager guessed, was one reason they called each other brother. Their attorneys’ names, of course, didn’t show up in these files; to learn those, Wager would have to comb through court records, but it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that Rubberhead’s lawyer had also been Heisterman. And that was another thing that bothered Wager: if he talked to Heisterman about these other clients it could—would—be made to look as if Wager had a conflict of interest because of the Neeley suit. Especially since Julio’s case wasn’t even his. It was like a goddamn chess game; Wager felt himself being closed out of large areas of the board by moves that he had no control over. Yet he also had the feeling that the reasons for Julio’s murder lay in this area just somewhere off his fingertips … that with a little more digging, with a break or two … But now, where Hastings was concerned, he would have to walk like a cat.

Aunt Louisa was ready for him, armed with almond cookies and a pot of coffee. The sharpness of her grief had dulled into an air of resignation, and she spoke softly in a way that reminded Wager of John Erle’s mother; he guessed that both women had a way of hiding things inside, of dwelling in silence on their hurts. “It’s good to see you, Gabe. You’re looking good.”

“Thanks, Aunt Louisa. These
galletas
are good—
muy sabrosas
.” Actually, they tasted sort of dry and sugarless, the way a lot of Mexican
dulces
did. But what else could he say? The coffee, as usual, really was tasty. “I’ve got to ask you some questions about Julio. Things you maybe didn’t remember earlier.”

“I understand, Gabe.” She settled herself a little more heavily at the other end of the small sofa. On the wall, freshly framed, smiled an enlargement of Julio’s yearbook picture; a cross made out of narrow strips of white felt was stuck to an upper corner, and on a small table under the photograph, a
vela
flickered in its red glass.

“I need to know exactly what happened the time Julio quit his job out at DIA. Anything he said to you at all, anything you might have wondered about, everything that happened.” He added, “Start with, say, the week before he quit—did he come home from work upset in any way?”

Her dark eyes went to the photograph, and Wager saw a faint tremor in the coffee that filled her cup. She sipped some out and put the cup safely on its saucer. “I’ll try.”

At first there wasn’t much different from what she had told him a few weeks ago, and she was apologetic. She wanted to give him important details that she believed he would like to hear. He had to remind her several times that wasn’t the idea—just tell him what happened, no matter how small or unimportant something might seem. Even close her eyes if that helped her recall things. Just try to remember anything and everything—there wasn’t anything special he was seeking, he said. Which wasn’t entirely true; he had an idea, and it gave him some direction for the gently probing questions he asked now and then. But the story was Aunt Louisa’s—her reliving of the last weeks of her son’s life, and the more she talked about it the more she recalled, and, moving back and forth in time and place as association fed her memory, she finally gave Wager a fairly clear picture.

Julio had been upset even before he stopped going to work; she had forgotten about that until Wager asked. About a week before, maybe a Thursday—he stopped going on the following Wednesday—he came home unsmiling and restless, but he wouldn’t say anything to her except it was nothing for her to worry about. Just some stuff at work. He went off the next morning, it must have been Friday, looking tired and said he hadn’t slept much. But she didn’t think anything of that—she had restless nights too every now and then.

“Do you know how much money he was making out there?”

“Money? Yes. He was doing real good. He made almost a hundred and eighty dollars a week. He gave me his paycheck to help with the bills and didn’t keep much for himself at all. Said he didn’t have nothing to spend it on anyway.”

“Did he have any other income you know of?”

She shook her head, puzzled. “Where would he get it?”

Wager changed direction. “What did Julio do over the weekend before he died?”

Well, come to think of it, not much. A lot of times he’d go to a movie with a friend or by himself or watch sports on TV. But, she remembered now, he didn’t even pay much attention to the television, she even said something to him about a program and he didn’t even know what he was watching. It was like he had been asleep staring at the screen.

“Did he say anything about anyone? Mention any names at all?”

“No … but whenever the telephone rang, he’d ask me to answer it. Ask who it was before he would talk. Remember, I already told you about that?”

“Was there anyone he did talk with?”

“Anthony. That’s his friend. The one he’d usually go to the movies with. He talked to him a couple times, but I don’t know what about. I didn’t want to listen, you know, and Julio wouldn’t talk loud.”

On Monday of the week he quit work, Julio came home upset again—or at least worried. In fact, she asked him if he was feeling all right, if he was feeling sick or something, he was so quiet. But he said no.

“Did he talk to Anthony then?”

No. That was when he stopped answering the telephone altogether; and the next couple of mornings, he didn’t even want to go to work but he wouldn’t say why. She had asked him, but all he said was he didn’t like the job anymore—that all they had him do was move junk around and pick up scraps and it was a big waste of time. When he got the job they told him he would be learning a trade, you know, carpentry or cement work, that kind of thing. But they didn’t teach him nothing so he wanted to quit, and finally he did. …

The interview took almost three hours, and when Wager finally went down the front steps of the bungalow, his trapezius ached but not from being shot. They both ached from tension. It had turned out to be as much therapy for his aunt as informative for Wager, and he felt drained from the effort to hold that narrow balance between making her remember and talk and preventing her from collapsing into tears.
Una llorona
. Even though she had a right to be sad, Wager was glad to be out of that small living room with its shadowy corners and the flickering candle and the almost suffocating air of ceaseless mourning.