Hard Bite (8 page)

"Come and eat. You guys deserve it," he calls, motioning them over to a small break table at the side and unloading generous servings of food.

They don't wait to be invited twice.

"We just wanted to talk a little bit, friendly like, over some good tacos," Mateo starts.

"We?" one of the guys ventures.

"Yeah, Luis is coming, too. He's parking the car."

"Sorry about Ambrose, man."

Mateo takes a huge bite of burrito and talks around it. "Yeah I'm sorry too. Any more you know? Cops been askin' anything?"

"Don' worry about it. We don't talk to no cops, you know that. Right?"

"Yah, forget it." Mateo gets up. "Let's see what's keepin' Luis. He was going to eat with us."

The men are all chewing when Luis and Mateo return together, guns blazing.

***

Back at home, Orella waits, hands busy with a rosary. Interrupting Orella's reverie, the real Maria Stamos walks into the room. She holds a dishtowel from cleaning up the kitchen, as she has done for Orella and her family the last ten years.

"
Puedo obtener algo
?" Can I get you anything?

"I'm fine,
gracias
, Maria."

Maria has been living in the little guest house out back since she and Hector were forced to abandon their home. Hector has gone down to Sinaloa to work with family until things calm down.

Suddenly, the television news blares a late-breaking story—a massacre at the Puerto Bros. body shop. The wrinkle-free Los Angeles anchors excitedly announce the whole place has been shot up during a luncheon break. Blood and tacos splattered floor to ceiling. There seems to be no motive, no robbery, no reason—with "gang-related" written all over it.

Maria and Orella exchange looks. "Maybe a cup of tea, por favor, Maria," says Orella.

***

The news story does not change much as day turns to night. Sitting in the dark, drifting through the house lit only by stray beams from the street, Orella anticipates the sound of tires pulling in the back alley, the gate pulling back almost noiselessly on its well-oiled hinge, the whisper-brush of sliding glass doors. Finally, the sounds arrive.

Her sons come in looking older than when they left. They are tired, but Luis seems agitated.

"Well?"

"It's done Mama."

"Done?"

"We got him. We got the guy."

She springs off the couch. "Who was it?"

"Doesn't matter. It's finish."

She's about to accept the explanation—Alejandro was not one for explaining details either—but there's something in Mateo's expression. A faint hint of surprise. Surprise because Luis must have just told one of his sterling silver lies.

She doesn't show anger or disbelief. She just says simply, "Buena," and retreats to her bedroom next door. Mateo turns on the shower. She knows soon after he'll leave and probably check into a motel for a little R&R with some black tar heroin. Luis has gone to his own room and closed the door. With the shower blasting away in the bathroom, Orella drifts into Mateo's room and looks all around. She shuffles through papers, taps the computer screen to wake it up and checks what is there. Then she spots his discarded clothing and rifles the pockets. Money, a pocket knife, his phone.

His phone.

There are saved messages on his voicemail. The first is from a drug courier in South Central. The message is full of code words. The second is from a woman irate about a missed date—such a colorful string of Spanish. The third is from a mechanic at Puerto Bros, talking about a man they put Ambrose in touch with just days before his death. A man. With a van. In a wheelchair.

Orella carefully resaves the message, places the phone back in Mateo's pants and slides out of the room.

A few well-placed dollars with a cash-strapped employee at the Department of Motor Vehicles yields results. Orella figures if the owner of the van was also a customer of Puerto Bros. he probably lived somewhere in the general area, and how many old vans of that make could be in west LA anyway?

With a crisp short-list from the DMV database growing damp in her hand, Orella checks out a mere half-dozen leads before finding the van at a Washington Boulevard address. The DMV list shows the van not currently licensed for road use, but that means nothing. It costs hundreds of dollars to register a vehicle for the road in Los Angeles, and under fifty bucks to register it as inoperative.

Here she is, at his apartment building. It has gated indoor parking, so Orella waits on foot until a car leaves the garage and darts inside before it closes. Walking the rows of cars and trucks, her footsteps echo in the half-empty space. Daytime, most good, tax-paying Americans are at work.

There, at the end of the row. A blue van with out-of-style pinstriping around it. She peers inside and sees the driver's seat has been removed and there's some kind of apparatus on the floor, probably to lock around the base of a wheelchair to hold it in place. Orella's heart flutters with relief. One step closer.

She hurries back outside and waits. Del Rey Towers is early 1970s construction. Ten stories high, an unusual height for the beach-side of Washington Boulevard. She studies names on the buzzers, but they are coded and don't give names away. She waits until the sun goes down, and hunger and thirst gnaw at her. But no man in a wheelchair appears.

She decides to go home and come back again tomorrow for a proper stakeout with comfortable clothes, water and snacks. She'll be able to sit in her car and watch the door all day. All week, all month, whatever it takes.

***

Seven in the ayem and it's already 80 degrees outside and rising. On the TV a mammalicious weatherbabe promises up to a hundred and three inland. On the ocean where we are it'll probably go to ninety-four. While the temperature is still tolerable Sid and I should go outside and take the air.

Sid zooms to the kitchen, tail unfurled and me rolling behind to the cupboards.

"Sid."

He looks inquiringly.

"Open door."

He opens the cupboard door I'm looking at and dammit, she's done it again! Blattlatch has rearranged my stuff! There's a nice bottle of Stool Formula One—poop medicine for constipated race car drivers? Colon blow so fast acting you need to have somebody standing by with a starter pistol and a bedpan? The bottle is thoughtfully pushed to the front, and all the useful stuff jammed behind it. She's a nurse not a housekeeper but she insists on this TIDYING and ARRANGING, this fussy, prissy YAAAAAAAH! She's not blinding me with science, she's annoying me to death one piddly visit at a time.

Sid bounds around the kitchen like this is an adventure land we've never been to before. One leap takes him to the kitchen counter where three bins are lined up, Coffee, Tea and Sugar. The first two actually contain what they say, but the third, not so much. Sid flips the lid back and starts eating monkey chow right out of the container. I let him eat on demand and like a healthy animal, he stops when he's full.

There's a terrific place in Santa Ana called Helping Hands that trains monkeys. It's a national nonprofit, serving quadriplegics and spinal-cord injury victims with high quality, highly trained helper monkeys. That's
not
where Sid came from. I was on a waiting list forever for a helper monkey, finally lost patience and went on the black market to see what I could find. The sellers were very upfront about Sid's strengths and weaknesses. He was an exceptionally intelligent animal with advanced skills, but prone to headstrong acts of defiance and lapses of concentration. Hey, I'm not perfect either.

After a promising start at training school, he got dropped and was put up for sale as a pet. I was told to get his teeth pulled and neutered as soon as possible. Teeth-pulling was out of the question for obvious reasons and I decided not to neuter him because it would lower his testosterone. Amateur physicians like myself know that testosterone fuels drive, industry, intensity, creativity and aggression. Aggression is the downside on a long scroll of positives. I wanted Sid to be his sharp, quick-thinking self and decided I'd roll with the occasional burst of defiance. Not a whole lot of difference between Sid and me, when you get down to it. Big monkey, small monkey; hard to say who's more civilized.

While Sid chomps, I consult my email. Garbage, spam… I've been wracking my brain of late to land the next kill. I'd get Sid to do it but we got so lucky at the carwash that I hate to overdo it. Besides this is LA, I need to employ creativity.

Here's an invite to join one of those group pages. Hold on a minute. California has to be the social networking capital of the universe. What if I faked a page, declared myself a writer, no not just a writer, a crime writer, offering paid interviews for real-life hit-and-run drivers? It's hard to believe anybody would be stupid enough to answer and actually tell the truth, but times are tough right now, and people will do things for money they never previously considered. I can feel you shaking your head, buddy. You agree with that one, huh? A hundred thousand jobs plus lost in LA due to the economy, and in LA everybody wants to sell their story. I'll make sure my page guarantees they can stay anonymous. That'll be the clincher. Everybody also knows that the press protect their sources, right?

An hour later, and I'm set up with a fake handle, a brand new fake email account and my own page. It's a beaut. I glance at the calendar and see Blattlatch is due for a visit. We are going for a check-up with Dr. Klanski, my internist. Blattlatch is bound to be early so we can all get to Klanski's office well ahead of time and wait longer than we need to in his office. I scratch a cheery post-it with my good hand to put on the front door. "Hi Miz Blattlatch. Please come in. Sid and I will be back in time to go see Doc K."

***

Outside the apartment building, Orella sips from a water bottle and shifts her hips into a more comfortable position. She's put in two ten-hour days, and so far, the van has not moved from basement parking. Neither has any handicapped man entered or exited the building.

Or maybe... What's that shape moving beyond the electric door? A reflection-darkened figure rolls toward the exit. She can see the outline of a wheelchair. The man looks so frail. A man that frail couldn't possibly drive a van, could he?

The door slides open and he exits into the daylight. Behind the tinted windows of her SUV, Orella stops breathing. Her heart booms in her chest. A small creature flits out of the man's lap to his shoulder. A monkey? Orella shakes her head in disbelief. It's almost as if the creature sees her looking, though he couldn't possibly see her with the sun right in his eyes, secreted as she is behind dark windows.

As if he were looking straight at her, the little monkey yawns, revealing white, sharp canine teeth.

Sweat breaks out across her forehead and a rivulet trickles down the back of her shirt. She grips the steering wheel so hard her knuckles crackle before slumping forward in a faint.

Five minutes, ten maybe, her eyes flutter open. She looks wildly up and down the road, gets out and jogs a few paces up and back. The man and his creature are gone but Orella knows what she's seen. Ambrose's real killer—a small, blonde and chocolate monkey with an adorable little face, hiding a full set of gleaming, flesh-ripping teeth.

At his desk in the squad room, Doug scrolls through electronic files, absorbing the criminal blueprint of the Malalinda family. In a separate window, he assembles notes to email to his partner Leone.

Alejandro Malalinda's record stretches all the way back to the late 80s, associated with notorious operatives in Operation Pelican Drop. The day is getting on, the Captain is touchy about overtime, but Doug really needs to get this in perspective. He stretches his legs under the desk and keeps reading.

Notes from the Special Services Unit, California Department of Corrections suggests Malalinda is a "people person" in a world of mafiosos, a talented organizer of men, a productive drug dealer and a ruthless, efficient killer. One weapons charge cites a Universal mini-14 rifle, a military-style AK-15 assault rifle, and an M-1 carbine stashed in his truck. He carried that kind of armory just to run personal errands.

Over the years, Alejandro served time at Pelican Bay, Lancaster, Corcoran and finally, LA County Men's Central, where he met his end at the age of 43. Doug rests his eyes a moment. Friends and family most likely took up the slack during Alejandro's time away, dutifully following his commands from behind bars and conducting business in his place. A smart boss like Alejandro could still command a battalion while incarcerated. Doug's educated conjecture is that after his death, Orella, Luis and Mateo Malalinda took over the business and began operating the drug trafficking and money laundering.