Hard Bite (20 page)

Each man in each cell wears elastic-waist orange pants and shirts with white T-shirts underneath—like me. Orange is for high-class felons. I'm relieved it's not a jumpsuit. How would I take a leak in a jumpsuit? Seeing how unbelievably crowded this place is I almost feel guilty to have a cell all to myself. Almost.

***

A warehouse. Somewhere in the north valley. No tenants right now and none wanted. The interior is gloomy and although there are racks of bright, fluorescent lighting overhead, they stay off. Luis and Mateo work by flashlight. In front of dozens of men, they uncrate and distribute assault weapons, high-caliber pistols and semi-automatics.

"We'll call you with the location," is all Luis will say.

***

County Hospital, downtown Los Angeles

Orella lies swathed in bandages, hooked to a monitor. Her heart rate is stable. Doug steps into the room.

"Orella, can you hear me?"

A slight movement under the bandages. Her eyelids are swollen shut.

"Orella, this is Detective Coltson. Who did this to you?"

The ruined mouth works under the bandages. Doug steps to her bedside, leans his ear close for a barely audible whisper…

"Ung…Ung…Ung-keyyyyyy."

"He called me on the phone," Marilyn Marshall begins. "It must have been Dean Drayhart. He asked me would it give me peace if they caught the man who hit and killed Dan."

"Please go on, Mrs. Marshall." Doug's heart goes out to this woman. She looks weary, all cried out, but three children depend on her to be strong. He knows the look of people who are weary but still carry on for their children. Doug, Leone and Marilyn are gathered in the family room of the Marshall home while the children cluster in the other room. The adults keep their voices low, mindful that the children could easily overhear.

"I said yes, God forgive me," Marilyn continues. "That's when he said the man who killed Dan was dead, and he could never hurt anyone again." A sob escapes her. "When I think how long my husband laid in that ditch after being hit by the car… if he had only called for help, Dan might still be alive." Her hand moves to her heart, tears run down her pretty, tired face. "I asked him, how did he know? And he said, he said, 'Because I did it.'" She looks back and forth at Doug and Leone. "Is it true? Is what that man said true?"

Leone offers a reassuring hand and speaks in her soothing voice. "That's what Drayhart confessed to. We have evidence that supports it."

Marilyn draws a breath and what she says gives Doug the most conflicted feelings he's had in thirteen years of police work. "I know what he did was against the law. But just because something is against the law doesn't make it wrong. That man taught me the difference. I thank that man, Dean Drayhart, and I pray for his soul."

***

"My name is Marcie, I'm Dean Drayhart's personal care nurse." Marcie's face is shiny and strained, and her shoulders are pinned back—hands tied. Two guns are aimed at her head, although the gunmen are off screen. She gets prodded by a gun muzzle and a rough voice says, "Keep talkin'."

"They want to trade me for my patient, M-Mister Drayhart. They say he killed their mother and brother." The gun muzzle prods her again. "And Sidney, they want him too. The monkey." On the other side of Marcie, a hand reaches for the camera. The screen goes blank.

The room is silent, with none of the routine feet shuffling and chair squeaking that usually follow a presentation. This is an interagency task force briefing. The Captain at the front picks up his laser pointer. "The hostage's name is Marcie Esther Blattlatch, fifty-one years of age, from Mar Vista," he announces. "Detective Doug Coltson is on the case. He'll be here soon."

Leone sits up front with an empty chair beside her. They are all crammed into a Bureau conference room—guys in suits over in the corner have already been introduced as FBI. The Feds are there, in addition to LAPD cops and LASD deputies because Dean Drayhart has been named with certainty as a serial killer, and that knocks his crimes into federal territory.

The Captain's shoes are the only sound as he walks center and clears his throat. "This room will be the hostage extraction unit's temporary headquarters until further notice. Recording equipment's already here—" he waves his arm at a small mountain of equipment piled on a rear table. "You've already been briefed on the Malalindas. We're dealing with Mexican Mafia here. We'll capture incoming calls from them, which could come at any time."

The Captain scans faces in the room. "I know the question on everybody's mind. 'Are we actually going into a trade situation?' The answer is yes and no. We'll probably have to show up at a location dictated by the Malalindas and bring the prisoner along. Show them that we're willing to deal. The idea is to get them surrounded along with the hostage, so tactical can—"

Doug Coltson quietly enters the room.

The Captain pauses.

"Sorry for lateness sir."

"You're excused. Everybody, this is Detective Doug Coltson, LASD Homicide. Now that you're here, how about an update?"

"Yes sir." Doug faces the room. "Dean Drayhart is at Men's Central High Power. There's a significant population of Mexican Mafia there, so he's a hot target. We're taking every precaution. He's co-operative and wants to help us resolve the situation."

"Before you sit down, Doug..." The Captain crosses the room, takes a cell phone off the table where the recording equipment sits, and returns with it. "The Malalindas refused contact with our negotiators. He holds the cell phone out to Doug.

"Sir?" he ventures.

"You're up, Coltson. The Malalindas say they won't talk to anybody else. Next call, they get patched through to you."

***

A few hours later, it starts with murmurings, snatches of low words, rising and falling. It catches on and escalates to catcalls.

"You dead, homie."

"You a greenlighter, muchacho. You deaaaad."

"Malalinda greenlight yo cripple ass."

Word is out. Or should I say, word's got in. There are no doors in this place, and the voices carry up and down the row.

"Hey cripple, you think you a big man now, huh? Now you shot Orella Malalinda?"

"You gots no arm Cripple Mang, you gonna have less soon."

Gulley appears at the bars. "Pipe down or I'll demerit the bunch a ya."

Somebody farts loudly. A round of laughter.

He says softly to me. "Detective Coltson wants to see you."

I'm taken down to an interview room. Coltson lays the cards on the table. "I talked with Dr. Klanski. He told us you had a girlfriend."

Silence.

"Does she have the monkey?

More silence.

"We'll find her, Dean. We'll comb the city."

"You don't have time. Blattlatch needs all your resources right now."

"Do yourself a favor, Dean. Cooperate a little."

"What are you going to do for me Detective? Give me one less life sentence?"

"You'll get Death Row. Co-operation could help deter that."

"Open your eyes. I'm already on Death Row." I let that register on him and then play my ace. "Tell me you won't put Sid down. Let him die of old age in an animal shelter somewhere."

"I can't promise that."

"You make deals with animals all the time."

"Your nurse will be executed if we can't find him."

"Or you'll execute my best friend. Some choice."

"Let me see what I can do."

We both know he won't, because he can't, and if he says he can, it's a lie.

***

On the way back to my cell it's all jumping in my brain. Blattlatch facing torture and death, trading Sid's death for Blattlatch's life. What a clusterfuck. On the High Power floor, Gulley wheels me past those glowering cells and a strange, haunting laugh comes out of one of them. It seems so familiar… like good old Mr. Death laughing at me. It serves like a poke from a cattle prod. The question is not who gets to live. The question is,
Who gets to die
? Sid will die a painless death at the humane hands of the state soon after Blattlatch goes free. Or Blattlatch can face a gruesome, pain-wracked death at the hands of criminals and Sid stays free. Looking at it like that, I know the right thing to do. It hurts bad, like my heart's punctured with a thousand poisoned needles but it's got to be done.

"Gulley," I say. "Am I still entitled to a phone call?"

"Believe so."

"I want one."

"I'll put in the request for you."

Again the catcalls and hoots as Gulley pushes me to my cell. I try to let it slide off but I gotta admit, it triggers me. These are prime hit-and-run personalities and I'd love to get a whack at one or two in this menagerie.

"Put a wad in it," Gulley commands in his best junkyard dog growl. "Or I'll put one in there for ya."

Grumbles. Mutters.

The cell next to mine is the home of an enormous black man. I assume he's enormous because his voice is as low and large as I've ever heard. "Hey homie, you and me only dudes not brown pride heah," he says.

Gulley wheels me in and the cell door clangs shut. "That makes us homies?" I reply.

"Homie as it get, yeah." he laughs wryly. "They got yo' nurse, why they want yo monkey, man?"

"They think he's a hazard."

"If he a hazard, you better tell the monkey to turn hisself in." He gives a falsetto laugh as soon as Gulley disappears and starts banging a rhythm on the bars, scraping a plastic comb between beats and singsonging, "Tell the monkey to turn hisself in."

He gets to the third time around and a cry goes up and down the row. They all bang on the bars, on the cement, chanting, "Tell the monkey to turn hisself in."

When the CO comes by hushing and shooshing them down, I ask again for phone privileges. I know the call will automatically be traced but that's okay, because it's not an actual number Cinda will pick up. It's just the number to a throwaway phone permanently turned off which goes to voicemail. Our emergency communication system. If she still cares. I wouldn't blame her if she didn't.

My wheelchair stops at a wall phone. I've got three minutes, way more than enough. I dial the number, wait for the voicemail to click in and say, "Tell the monkey to turn himself in." I hang up. If she checks it, God willing, Cinda will know what to do.

11 P.M.

The day has been long, but adrenaline still thrums through Doug's body, keeping thoughts turning over and over in his mind. He lets himself into the dark house where Tabitha and the kids lie asleep. But in his mind he's back at Drayhart's apartment. Two books on a desk caught his eye:
The Art of War
by Sun Tzu, which Doug has heard of, and
The Book of Five Rings
, which he hasn't. The forward says
The Art of War
is the oldest military treatise in the world, written sometime around 600 BC.

A passage from the first chapter jumped off the page.
Hold out baits to entice the enemy.
It's an idea that worked back then, it could still work now.

Taking off his shoes, he goes directly to the bedroom where Tabitha sleeps. The creak of his shoulder holster sounds loud against the silence as he eases it off along with his jacket.

"Is it over?" Tabby's voice comes softly from the dark.

"Soon," he replies.

"Is that poor lady still alive?"

Doug unbuttons his shirt. "As far as we know. She's their leverage—I don't think they've harmed her." He stops himself from saying, "Yet."

"What about the disabled man? The serial killer? Doesn't he know anything?"

"He knows lots, but not where she is."

Words jam on his tongue. He wants to say he's been forced between a rock and a hard place as negotiator. He wants to share a chuckle of glee at the FBI guys taken down a notch by the Malalinda's demands. But he also feels off-balance; shot out of a cannon into an unknown role with new rules. Landmines all around. No map. The scrambled words lie there unspoken, too many of them. Instead he sighs, "It feels good to be home." He undoes his belt, keeping his back to Tabitha as an image flashes through his mind—the eventual confrontation with the Malalindas. Where will it take place? He pictures himself and his unit, sidearms drawn behind cars flashing amber and red. Backup recruits spread out behind their vehicles, weapons resting on the roofs of their units while FBI tactical swarms into the night.