Hollywood Tough (2002) (18 page)

"Dennis, this is my new partner at Cine-Roma, Shane Scully." Nicky was trembling as Shane stuck out his hand.

"I don't shake hands. Germs. It's a thing with me," Dennis said.

"Right. How ya doing?" Shane asked.

"Not so hot."

"I can see."

"Well, gotta go," Shane said to Nicky. "I'm meeting Mike Fallon tomorrow at the Polo Lounge for breakfast. Ten o'clock. Why don't you join us?"

"Okay," the little grifter agreed. Then Shane started to shake hands again with Dennis Valentine but caught himself, pulled back and smiled.

"Sorry. Forgot. Nice to meet you." Shane turned and left Nicky Marcella to tell Dennis Valentine the tale.

Once he was off the patio and into the adjoining restaurant, Shane stopped and looked back through the tinted-glass window. He could see Nicky talking. Dennis Valentine was leaning forward, listening intently. At least the little grifter hadn't frozen this time. Shane didn't have to be there to read the result. Valentine had a hungry shark look on his heavy, masculine face. He was nodding and looking toward the door Shane had just disappeared through.

It was six-fifteen P
. M
. when Shane left the hotel, so he stayed off the freeway to avoid traffic and used surface streets to get to the office of Drug Enforcement on the fourth floor of Parker Center, downtown. He picked up the keys to the asset seizure house on North Chalon Road, then called Alexa and Chooch on their cell phones and made an appointment to meet them there at eight, suggesting they stop by the Venice house to pack overnight bags. After hanging up, he still had well over an hour, and there was something else he'd been meaning to do.

He called Alexa's office, got the new LAPD secure computer code from her adjutant, then accessed Carol White's home address from the Vice mainframe. She lived on Temple Street in Rampart, a few blocks west of Coronado.

Shane pulled up in front of a sad-looking two-story cream-and-brown apartment house. There was an old homeless woman decorating the curb out front. Parked on the grass next to her was a Vons market wire basket; a silver chariot crammed to overflowing with her priceless possessions. The woman was ageless, anywhere from thirty to sixty, dressed in fatigues and an old Army Surplus blanket cut like a poncho, with a hole in the center for her head. When Shane got out of his car and started past her, he could hear her moaning softly, so he stopped. He turned to find her rocking back and forth on her haunches, her lifeless eyes like holes cut in cardboard.

A few years back, the state mental institutions had decided to release all of their nonviolent patients to cut down on costs. These poor souls were now camped out in alleys and under freeway bridges all over town. The women were particularly pitiful, becoming constant rape targets who, because of their mental illnesses, could not defend themselves. Over the past few years Shane had taken many of these dazed sexual assault victims to County Hospital. Sometimes they couldn't even remember what had happened to them. They would be treated and released. Once back on the streets, the cycle of violence and sexual assault would begin all over again. Shane opened his wallet and handed the woman a ten. She looked up at him and smiled. Through her split lip he saw broken teeth. He was in the same dimension with her, but not anywhere in her vicinity. It occurred to him that most cops didn't give handouts to homeless people. Cops were supposed to be cynics. So what the hell was he doing? Why was he turning into such a bleeding heart?

He found Carol's name on the registry board, then climbed to the second floor and walked down the narrow corridor, inhaling old urine and mildew. He stopped in front of her apartment door, which still had yellow LAPD crime tape across its threshold, took out his lock picks and, in a few minutes, let himself in.

Carol White's apartment was another surprise. The forty-dollar street whore lived in a pink-rug and white-lace wonderland. The place looked like it had been decorated by a ten-year-old; cutouts of teen magazine fashion layouts were stuck on the walls, white teddy bears looked down from bookshelves. The three-room apartment was as frilly and innocent as Carol was broken down and used up. Most drug addicts stop doing housework and live in filth. It surprised him how clean everything was.

There was a bedroom and bath with a small kitchen and living room, all of it extremely neat, except for the graphite dust the Homicide print team had left behind. It darkened the doorjambs at shoulder height and was on a few kitchen and bathroom drawer handles. It didn't look like a very thorough dusting. Shane counted six general locations where the print team had smeared the hard surfaces with their number nine brushes full of dark powder.

On important murders, he had seen enough graphite to open a pencil factory. By comparison, this was pretty meager. Ruta was obviously doing a slapdash job in his effort to get done quickly and move on.

On the dresser, Shane found several old pictures of Carol in her beauty pageant days. She looked about fifteen, fresh and wholesome, standing in a white bathing suit and heels. A winner's sash was draped around her luscious body, displaying both magnificent curves and childlike innocence.

It was hard to believe that in two or three years, this beautiful child had been turned into the heroin addict he'd met a few days ago.

Shane shook out of a descending funk that was settling over him. He wasn't here to look at old pictures. He searched through the apartment but didn't find what he wa
s l
ooking for, so he sat in Carol's bedroom chair, across from an open window, and waited.

His mind began to wander back to Dennis Valentine. Shane had decided that a great-looking, criminally connected guy like Valentine probably wasn't used to being ignored, so that was going to be his play, but something told him to be careful. The relationship between Valentine and Nicky was complicated. Dennis had treated the little grifter like a flunky, not like the valued partner and adviser that Nicky had said he was. Shane now seriously doubted they were in a film agreement with each other.

He reached into his pocket and fingered the keys to the department's asset-seizure house, as his mind switched channels. He tried to envision living in such a magnificent home, even temporarily. Shane had been an orphan, raised by several different foster parents, all blue-collar families. But like a bony river fish, he kept being thrown back, and had ended up in a state-run group home. His idea of luxury was his small canal house in Venice; the house on North Chalon was going to be a whole new experience.

His mind flipped once more, now pondering Amac and Chooch. He found himself picking at that old scab again until it opened, oozing concern. Was Chooch going to do something stupid? Could he trust him to stay away from American? He had begun to sense there might be something else binding Chooch and Amac besides friendship. He wasn't sure what it was, but the more he thought about it, the more he suspected there was a hidden piece he didn't understand yet.

Then, what he had been waiting for suddenly arrived. It jumped off the tree limb outside and landed on the open windowsill, teetered there for a minute, then jumped down into the room.

Carol's marmalade cat.

"Hey, Franco," Shane said, remembering what Carol had named him. The cat froze, startled at seeing an intruder. Shane had spotted no food or water bowls in the apartment, so he got up and finally found some cat food in the kitchen
,
put it on a plate, then filled a bowl with water and set them both down.

Franco ran at the bowl of water, drank first, then settled on his haunches and started to devour the dry cat food.

After he finished, the cat turned and studied Shane. Cats were supposed to have only one expression, but Franco was definitely projecting sadness. Shane also saw grief and confusion in those large yellow eyes.

"She's not coming back, guy," Shane told him. "You can stay here and look for another sucker to feed you, or you can come with me."

The cat looked at him, moved his ears forward, then came over and started to wind around his feet. Shane reached down and picked Franco up, then held him and scratched behind his ears. The cat started purring loudly.

"Deal," Shane murmured.

He gathered up some cat supplies, found the litter box and emptied it into the trash, then packed everything up in the box. Balancing the supplies under one arm and Franco under the other, he left Carol's apartment.

He put Franco and the supplies into the Acura, while the old lady on the curb watched. He pulled away from the apartment with his new pet, leaving the pitiful homeless woman behind.

Only one stray at a time, he thought, then got the hell out of Rampart.

The drive from Carol's depressing, paint-peeling apartment building to the drug dealer's beautiful, two-story Colonial on North Chalon Road was a short freeway trip out of desperation into the American dream. The two neighborhoods were separated by only twenty minutes and fifteen miles, but they were light-years from one another.

Chapter
19.

"I can't believe we get to live here," Chooch exclaimed. Shane and Alexa had set down their overnight bags, and were now following Chooch through the beautiful house, going door to door down the long hall, admiring the expensive artwork and plush-pile-carpeted rooms full of antiques and French twill fabrics.

Shane couldn't believe it either.

Alexa was moving slowly, walking behind them. She had a troubled look on her face. They went into the master bedroom, which had a large mirror on the ceiling over a king-size bed.

"At last, I'll be able to see what I'm doing," Shane quipped as Alexa dug him in the ribs with her elbow.

Wearing their undies, the three of them plunged into the ten-meter pool for a swim. Shane and Chooch got into a water fight in the shallow end, and Alexa sat on the steps a few feet away, laughing at them.

She needed to laugh. The tension of the past few days had been wearing on her, and the laughter finally erased the stress lines from her face. But while they were in the pool her pager went off. She climbed out, dripping water from her soaked bra and panties, found the telephone inside the living room door and dialed the number on her beeper LED screen. A few minutes later she came back outside.

"I've gotta go."

"Oh, come on . . . Really?" Shane moaned.

"We've got three more. This time it's Emes. A massacre at one of those unincorporated nightclubs in the Las Lomas Hills."

At the mention of The Hills, Chooch waded to the shallow end. "Was it . . . is it him?"

"I don't know, honey. I just got the call. The Blues who caught the squeal said the three victims were all shotgunned."

"I wanna go with you," Chooch said.

"Not gonna happen," Shane said.

"What if it's Amac? What if it's him? I mean, wouldn't he be the number-one target?"

"It's not him, Chooch," Shane said. "He's way too careful to be hanging around in some dirt-floor nightclub in Las Lomas."

"Dad, please let me go. . . ."

"I think he should," Alexa agreed.

Without waiting for further rebuttal, Chooch bounded out of the pool and ran inside to get his clothes.

"You can't take him to a murder scene," Shane said.

"Why not?" she shot back. "Since he's still obviously flirting with this, I think maybe he needs to see what a gang war is really all about."

"I don't want him to see it. I won't allow it."

"What about what I think, or have you forgotten I'm his adopted mother? I'll cut you some slack and put that aside because none of us are thinking too clearly right now, but I think this is exactly the right thing for us to do."

"You wanna take him to a triple shotgun murder."

"Yeah."

Shane climbed out of the pool and faced her. "Look, Alexa, I don't want him exposed to this, okay?"

"Shane, I talk to him about things he doesn't want to tell you. He's . . . he's not out of this. He's still a part of that world."

"La Eme?" Shane was stunned. "I got him out of tha
t t
wo years ago. Amac wouldn't take him back. He wouldn't do that to him."

"He's not an Erne. He's not in the gang, but he's still emotionally tied to it. They're his old clica."

Shane tried to absorb this.

"I think he needs a little shock therapy," Alexa continued. "Maybe this shooting in The Hills is just what we need to show him it isn't some romantic game they're playing."

Shane was stunned to learn Chooch had confided in Alexa and not him. Worse still was the idea that his son still regarded gang life as romantic. Shane thought they'd seen the end of that. "I'll go with you," he blurted.

"No, that would change it. It would force him to react differently. Let me do this."

"He can react with me there."

"Shane, he knows what you expect of him. He loves you and he wants to please you, but this is about his ethnic blood. Can't you see that? Let me take him. I'll look out for him. I won't let him out of my sight."

After a long moment, Shane concluded that, as usual, she was probably right. "How long will you be gone?"

She looked at her watch. "I'll try to be back before midnight."