Cemetery Road (17 page)

‘Nonsense.’ She turned to me. ‘Handy, these are the policemen working on Bobby’s case for us. Detective Saunders’ – she nodded toward the black man – ‘and Detective Rodriguez. Did I get that right?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ both cops murmured in unison.

‘This is Handy White, detectives. He’s an old family friend of Bobby’s from Minnesota who’s been trying to help Toni and me get through this very difficult time.’

Saunders just nodded his head, but Rodriguez showed more initiative. ‘Trying to help how?’ he asked.

‘Any way I can,’ I said.

‘So we hear. You were out trying to help at Coughlin Construction yesterday, weren’t you?’

I didn’t have to ask how they knew; it would have turned my opinion of Mike Owens upside down if he hadn’t ratted me out by week’s end.

‘That’s right. I thought somebody there might remember something useful.’

Saunders, whose refusal to accept the onset of baldness had left his head divided into four separate, feuding islands of gray-speckled hair, decided he didn’t want Rodriguez playing cop alone. ‘Useful? How do you mean?’

‘He means useful to
us
,’ Toni said, moving around the room to set herself squarely between the detectives and me. ‘Those of us who’d like to see the person or persons who murdered my father put away for good.’

‘And you don’t think we’re trying hard enough to make that happen. Is that it?’ Rodriguez asked.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘All the lady’s trying to say is that we all want the same thing here.’

‘I’m sure we do, sir,’ Saunders said. ‘The thing is, my partner and I are the only ones whose job it is to get it done.’

If he’d been trying to nail the door on the subject shut, he couldn’t have done a better job. I had no counter for his argument, and for a long moment, at least, neither did either of the Burrows.

‘My daughter and I didn’t ask for Mr White’s help so he could make your job more difficult, detectives,’ Frances said in time. ‘But we were concerned that some of the conclusions you seem to have reached about my husband might cause you to take too narrow a view of his murder.’

The two detectives exchanged a glance. Saunders spoke before Rodriguez could: ‘We base our views in every case on the evidence at hand, Mrs Burrow. Nothing more.’ He directed his attention to me. ‘We would appreciate it, Mr White – most especially since you have no legal license to do so – if you would put off any future efforts to play policeman until my partner and I have officially closed our investigation into Mr Burrow’s death. That way, it won’t be necessary for us to arrest you on the charge of interfering in police business which, I’m sure, would only make these fine ladies feel worse than they already do.’

‘The only thing that could make us feel worse, detective, is another day going by without knowing who killed my husband,’ R.J.’s widow said.

‘It just so happens, ma’am, that we’ve come here this morning to tell you that we think we may have found that individual,’ Rodriguez said, mustache twitching. ‘But I’m afraid that’s something we’ll have to insist upon discussing with you in private.’

He trained a disdainful gaze upon me, but that wasn’t the reason for my sudden unease, nor Toni Burrow’s. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that she, too, was waiting to hear what her mother would say next, and whether it would seal my fate by including some mention of Darrel Eastman’s name.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Frances said. ‘I’ve told you, Mr White is a very dear friend. Anything you have to say to me or my daughter about Bobby’s murder you can say to him, as well.’

‘Mrs Burrow . . .’ Saunders started to protest.

‘The detectives are right, Frances,’ I said. ‘This is a private matter between you and them, and in any case, I was just on my way out.’ I turned to Saunders and Rodriguez. ‘I’d like to thank you two gentlemen for showing me so much patience. You can rest assured I’ll be doing everything I can from here on out to make this meeting our last.’

Rodriguez looked as if he wanted to respond, but he let me go without bothering.

SEVENTEEN

F
or all the things I’d found different about Los Angeles since I’d left it for St Paul, one thing, at least, had apparently not changed: You still couldn’t get to LAX without a fight.

Maybe this wasn’t the case back in 1929 when the city fathers turned a wheat field in Westchester into Los Angeles International Airport. Housing in the area had yet to boom and the 405 freeway was over thirty years in the future. But at some point in time, after the airport had become ‘freeway close’, it also became unreachable, a far island surrounded by motor vehicles that you could neither quickly nor easily approach, day or night. It was that way during all my years as an LA resident, it had been that way two Mondays ago when I’d dropped in for R.J.’s funeral, and that’s how it was today, twenty-six years and millions of dollars in obvious attempts to rush traffic along later.

I would not have been making the trip at all had O’ not insisted. I would have preferred to be doing almost anything else. But when you called the mayor of Bellwood to insist upon an unscheduled meeting, you had to go wherever his itinerary made it convenient for him to see you. O’ had said he was attending a business conference at a hotel outside the airport, and he could give me ten minutes if I could show up in fifteen, so I headed west down Slauson Avenue only minutes after I’d left Frances and Toni Burrow in the hands of the SMPD to see how fast my rented econobox could make the trip.

As I drove, I was struck again by how foreign some parts of the city were to me now. Fox Hills, in particular, had shape-shifted in my absence from little more than a shopping mall to a sprawling mass of industrial and residential complexes. Land nobody used to want had at some point in the last twenty-plus years turned to gold, and seemingly uncontained development had ensued.

I turned south on Sepulveda Boulevard and kept right on rubbernecking, taking in this brave new world with all the slack-jawed wonder of a farm boy who’d never seen a Burger King before. Somewhere just past Centinela, I got careless and drifted out of my lane; I awoke in time to avoid sideswiping a black pickup truck twice my rental car’s size, but too late, I was sure, to satisfy one observer: the driver of a distant patrol car reflected in my rear-view mirror.

The car was hanging too far back for me to make out its markings, but the telltale halftone paint job and rooftop light bar were unmistakable.

Men of color like myself, children of urban environments in which the police do not always put justice ahead of the compulsion to mete it out, learn early on to be afraid at moments like this. Our fear is almost never a rational one, but we feel it just the same. We have seen too many men and women in uniform abuse the power they have been given by turning a simple traffic violation into cause for search, seizure and public humiliation – or worse. One minute you’re handing over your license and registration, and the next you’re lying nose-down in the street, in the rain, waiting for the cops who pulled you over to become convinced they’ve mistaken you for someone who actually deserves their interest, let alone their contempt. Thus, we see a car with white doors and colored fenders coming and grow stock still, and hope against hope it will reveal itself to be not a police car at all, but a mere imitation, just a squad car lookalike driven by a rent-a-cop from one private security firm or another.

I couldn’t yet tell what this one was.

The 9 mm Taurus O’s delivery boy had given me the night before was in the rental’s glove box. It was a foolish place to keep it, but then, I hadn’t asked for a gun just to regret not having it if the need arose to use it. If I got pulled over and the car was searched, I’d spend the night in jail and be sent home, at best. At worst, I’d do some serious time and give R.J.’s widow and daughter one more thing to lose sleep over. In either case, my days as the great defender of R.J.’s memory would be over here and now.

The blue-and-white patrol car, still a half-dozen car lengths back, finally edged out of my lane into the next. I waited for the single occupant – a nebulous uniform shielded behind the glare of the windshield – to hit the lights or the siren, but he did neither. He just kept coming, seemingly content to keep pace with me and nothing more.

If I’d been holding out any last hope to this point that the cop and I would never meet, getting rear-ended at the next major intersection relieved me of this notion entirely. The collision wasn’t much more than a tap, but it had been just hard and noisy enough to make ignoring it unrealistic. I looked up into my rear-view and saw a middle-aged Asian in a loud checkered shirt cursing his own stupidity as he got out of his car to check the damage. I didn’t want to, but I pushed my own door open to join him.

He was chattering something about spilling a drink as we came together at the point of impact. He was apologizing profusely, seeking both my mercy and full attention, but I gave him neither. I was too busy watching the blue-and-white cruiser behind him complete an abrupt U-turn in the middle of the street and race off into the distance.

It wasn’t something I’d never seen a cop do before; uniforms in patrol cars often changed direction without warning, lights and siren off, like a kid on a new tricycle. Still, I had to wonder.

Was it the hassle of taking an accident report that had sent this policeman running, or me?

‘You don’t have that thing on you right now, do you?’

O’ was looking me over carefully.

‘What thing?’

‘That thing you asked me to find for you yesterday.’

We were less than a mile from LAX, walking around the block along Century Boulevard after I’d drawn him away from the conference he was attending at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t running the risk of being caught fraternizing with a man who had a 9 mm semi-automatic in his pocket.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘I’d give you hell about being late, except for the fact you’re doing me a favor, getting me away from that bore-fest back in there. Forty-five public servants sitting around a banquet room talking about “Controlling the IT Costs of the Modern Municipal Infrastructure”. Can you believe that shit?’

I told him about the small fender-bender that had held me up.

‘You OK? Nobody got hurt?’

‘Everybody’s fine. The cars, too.’

‘This shit must be pretty important. You call my private number less than twenty-four hours after I give it to you, then damn near kill yourself trying to make a meeting. What’s going on?’

I stopped walking so he’d be forced to deal with the news head-on.

‘He was talking to Paris McDonald, O’,’ I said.

‘R.J.?’

‘His daughter said they were exchanging letters. He might have even visited McDonald in prison.’

‘Bullshit. Why the hell would he do that?’

‘Because McDonald invited him up.’

‘McDonald didn’t even know him.’

‘He wasn’t supposed to. But maybe something happened to change that.’

We were standing directly under the airport’s incoming flight patterns, and monstrous jets were scraping the sky just over our heads every few minutes, howling loud enough to unseat teeth. O’ waited for the latest one to go by, then said, ‘Let’s keep moving,’ and started walking again.

‘Have you seen these letters they allegedly wrote to each other?’

‘There’s only supposed to be one. But no, not yet.’

‘Then we don’t know who contacted who first.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. If R.J. made first contact, it’s possible he never told McDonald anything. But if McDonald found
him
first, that can only mean McDonald knows the works. About R.J., about us – everything.’

‘Except R.J.’s the only one dead,’ I said, and then quickly added, ‘so far.’

‘Which is all the more reason to believe we’ve got nothing to worry about. You seen any more of your boy from the bar?’

I shook my head.

‘Well, there you go.’

‘Assuming he’s the one I need to be looking out for, and I’m not so sure that he is. Unless his name is Darrel Eastman.’

‘Darrel Eastman?’

I told him who Eastman was, and of the call Frances Burrow had said R.J. might have taken from him at the house one night, pausing every two dozen words or so to let a jet aircraft roar past.

‘How come I’m not surprised?’ O’ said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means this Eastman fits the cops’ theory and mine of R.J.’s murder to a T, and R.J. knew him. Brother drove out to the beach with a lowlife acquaintance to get high and got jacked. Damn, Handy, how much more evidence of that do you need?’

‘It’s a nice theory, O’, but it doesn’t explain everything. Like how it is he got himself killed within weeks of hooking up with the last man any of us should have ever wanted to see. You telling me that was just a coincidence?’

‘It’s not a very likely one, I’ll admit, but it’s possible. Is Eastman in custody yet?’

‘Not as of yesterday, but things could be different today. I was by to see the Burrow women this morning and the detectives working R.J.’s case came around just as I was leaving.’

‘Do we know what this Eastman looks like, at least?’

‘No.’

‘Then he and your friend from the bar could be one and the same.’

‘Could be. But how would Eastman have latched on to me, and why? Why target me before you?’

‘Maybe because I’ve been keeping my nose out of R.J.’s murder, and you haven’t?’

It was a small dig, but a deep one.

‘You still think I should be back home, waiting for them to come to me?’

‘What “them”? Right now, as far as we know, Eastman was a lone gunman, and even that hasn’t been proven yet.’

‘And McDonald?’

‘When you can tell me what was in this letter you say he wrote R.J., or connect him with either Eastman or whoever it was that spooked you so bad the other night, we can talk about McDonald. Until then, I don’t see any point in either of us losing sleep over the poor bastard.’ He checked his watch, just as he had the last time we’d seen each other and he’d grown tired of my company. ‘I’ve gotta be getting back. Anything else I should know about?’