L. A. Mischief (13 page)

“I didn’t... I wasn’t trying to hurt myself.”

“Good thing you weren’t trying.” David glanced at Chris then back to Des. “That was a jackass stunt, real or not. If you wanted to send us a message I can give you the number for Western Union.”

“Honest, David. It was an accident.”

David shook his head. “I’m trying to believe you, Des. But...” he sighed, “don’t let it happen again, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Chris watched David walk out the door without a backward glance. His shoulders slumped as he turned back toward the bed. Then his eyes narrowed.

“What did you mean going there for lunch? Did you and David go out some other time?”

“Oh, don’t get your Calvin’s in a knot. He took me out to the pier. We talked.”

“About what?”

Des smiled. “You, mostly. He misses you, you know.”

“Yeah, well he’s got a funny way of showing it.”

“Yeah, well David’s a funny guy. No, I take that back. He’s a complex guy, is what he is. You ought to know that.”

“Complex. Yeah, that pretty well says it all.” Chris sighed. “His problem is he doesn’t want to be gay. And I don’t know how to fix that.”

“You can’t. Only he can chose to accept that or not. I know he loves you. Maybe someday that will be enough.”

“But can I wait that long?”

“You can wait, or you can move on. And
you’re
the only one who can chose that.”

“I guess we’re in the same boat, aren’t we?”

“What do you mean?”

“You can either hang on to Kyle’s memory or you can move on. What do you think Kyle would want?”

Des stared at him for a heartbeat then he shook his head. “You are such a bitch, Bellamere.”

“Yes, I am.” He approached the bed. “What do you say, boyfriend. Do we move on?”

Tears sprang into Des’s eyes, matching the ones in Chris’s. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Let’s take this show on the road.”

He waited for Des to be released then he drove him home. They ordered pizza and drank iced green tea and shared the chocolates. Only when Des grew drowsy did Chris kiss him good night and put him to bed before he locked up and left the house.

DAVID GRABBED A chili dog on his way back to Northeast. Martinez was already at his desk. They were bringing
Señoras
Robles in for a formal interview. They had already issued BOLOS or Be On the Lookouts for Torres and Goyo. The owner of the ice cream truck had been contacted but it turned out Torres hadn’t shown up for work for a while. Since not long after the fatal shooting.

David was worried that the Avenue bangers who had tried and failed to kill the two
Sureños
would be looking for them with more street resources available to them than the LAPD had. He had already called in his CIs to put the word out that he needed to find them. Whether anyone would come through remained to be seen. In the meantime they had other angles to explore.

But not enough. It was never enough.

It wasn’t helping that he couldn’t stop thinking about Chris and how he had looked at the hospital. Vulnerable and so desirable he had wanted to take him in his arms and never let him go. But that horse was dead and there was no sense flogging it any more.

But oh dear God, he didn’t want it to end like this. Not when he only had to close his eyes and traitorous images of Chris impaled on his cock, riding him into delicious oblivion, appeared. Or the taste of Chris and the sounds he made when he came. All memories he couldn’t expunge no matter how hard he tried.

He hadn’t been back to the Eagle since he’d been there with Chris. He also hadn’t taken any of Blair’s calls. He refused to acknowledge that he was ignoring the sexy leather man. He just wasn’t ready to take that relationship up again.

What had happened with Des scared him. Chris and Des were so close, in a way that had always made David jealous. Not that he thought anything was going on between the two, but rather at their closeness. To see Des so on edge was a painful shock. If something like that happened to him, who would be there for him? Des had Chris and if Chris ever fell that far they both knew Des would be there for him one hundred percent. Who would be there for David? Had he driven everyone away to the point that no one would be there to stand beside him?

Except Chris. When he had heard that David was in the hospital he had come out immediately, no questions asked. Even after over a month of being separated he had been there. Would David do the same thing for Chris? Or would his fears keep him at arm’s length even then?

He glanced over at Martinez who made it very clear that he liked it just fine when there was no mention of David’s bedroom preferences. Could he fly in the face of that to bring Chris back into his life openly, denying nothing?

He tried to imagine what his life would be like then. His mind consistently shied away from that kind of declarative statement.

But... could he give up Chris because of that?

Martinez got off the phone. “Got a hit. My CI says Torres is on the street. He’s got a hurt on and he’s scoping for some ice.”

So at least one of them was a tweaker. Only a need for methamphetamine would drive the rat out of his hole. David grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair, checked his Glock .45 in his shoulder holster and followed Martinez out to sign a car out of the motor pool.

“There’s a park at the end of Drew. My CI says that’s where the buy will go down. It’s pretty open there. They’ll see us coming.”

“We’ll take my car then,” David said. “That won’t stand out as much. It still needs a lot of body work.”

“Gotta blend a bit better than a Crown Vic.”

Drew was less than a mile from the station, but it was a world apart. They cruised past the razor topped yards on Andrita Street to residential W Avenue 32, finally west on Drew to where it dead-ended. David parked the Chevy in the shade of a tagged Sycamore. Sitting in the car, he studied the park across the street. David spotted the hunched figure scuttling down the incongruously sunlit street. He looked like a hurting unit. Probably why he never noticed the two men crouched low in the front seats of the ancient car.

He ducked into a passageway that led past a covered picnic area. A beat up Impala crawled past the Chevy. David had the briefest glimpse of two Black men. The passenger’s side door opened and a short prison-muscled man with a blue baseball cap and a Pirates sweatshirt strolled across the road toward the park.

Martinez popped his door open and rolled out of the car in a crouch. David waited until he was clear of the door and threw the Chevy into gear, slamming his foot on the gas. Tires squealed and he skidded sideways, blocking the Impala. The driver abandoned the car, bolting across the road toward the open space of the park. David was hard on his heels. “Stop!” David yelled. “Police!”

The driver jinked right, David followed. Martinez went sideways, tackling Torres who had tried to rabbit past his connection back out onto the street.

Legs pumping, lungs screaming for air, David felt a strange exhilaration sweep through him. This was what he did best. Good police work was more fun than anything else, even restoring his classic car. Even Chris.

The driver came to a row of dense bushes and tried another ninety degree turn. David anticipated him and met him head on. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs. The driver tried to crab crawl through the spiny manzanita ground cover. David hauled him back, yelling at him. “Get down on your stomach. Put your hands on your head, your fingers laced—”

“Fuck you!” the driver spat at him, lunging around on his back and kicking and punching David’s chest, gut and thighs. David pushed him onto his stomach, kneeling on him to hold him down while he pulled his cuffs out and slapped them on one wrist. Before he could get the metal bracelets around the second wrist, the driver went berserk, nearly throwing David off in his wild gyrations. David hung on, grimly aware of the feel of something hard in the other man’s waistband, a knife or a gun, he didn’t know. Didn’t want to find out.

Adrenaline pumped and he used his greater weight to slam the driver back onto his stomach and snicked the last cuff in place, immobilizing him. He kept his knee on the small of the man’s back. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Martinez propelling Torres back toward the Chevy.

He called for a couple of black and white shops to pick up their prisoners. The second dealer had fled and neither David or Martinez made any effort to find the guy. They kept the two birds in hand prone on the ground, ignoring their curses.

Martinez toed Torres who was already beginning to sweat, though the air was still cool.

“Where’s your partner, Torres? He leave you hanging out to dry alone on this beef?”

“What beef? I din’t do nothing,” Torres whined.

“Tell that to
Señora
Robles.”

“Who?”

“Maria. Adora, Maria and Adora Real. The little girl and her mother you got popped.”

Martinez jerked him upright as a shop pulled in behind the Chevy. He threw the tweaker toward the first uni who stepped out of his vehicle.

“Let him sit in lock up for an hour or two, see if he wants to talk them.”

The uni stuffed him into the back of his shop. David heard him tell the shaking junkie, “You toss your cookies in my car and I’ll plant my boot up your ass.” A second black and white pulled up and they loaded the driver, who turned out to be Winston Guardia from Highland Park crew with a long list of priors and his name on another gang injunction, into the back.

Once the two shops had rolled away Martinez strolled over toward the park. David followed. He watched his partner move slowly past the screen of whitewashed palms and unkempt boxwood. “Looking for something?”

“Think I saw Torres toss something when he got wind of us.”

David studied the ground as they walked. Not likely to be drugs. Torres had been too hyped to have had drugs already. It had to be something else. Something he didn’t want to get caught with.

David spotted it first. He pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves and gently parted the manzanite cover and pulled the handgun out for closer inspection. Martinez stepped up to examine the weapon. It was a Raven .25. “Our killer’s?”

“Right caliber.”

Martinez looked puzzled. “I thought we figured our shooters were involved in a hit against Torres and Goyo. You saying you think those two shot their own?”

“What if Maria was playing outside the fold? Greener pastures. You heard grandma, she was ruined by the drugs.”

“She’s banging an Avenue and Goyo finds her out. He’s going to be pissed.”

“Pissed enough to kill both her and the kid?”

“That’s cold,” Martinez muttered.

“They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. What about a banger getting cuckolded,” David said. “Kid just becomes collateral damage.”

“So we’re not looking for an outside shooter?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Back in the Chevy they drove toward Northeast. But instead of heading toward the station David turned toward Los Feliz Boulevard. “Lunch?”

“Sounds good.”

“Baby back ribs at Mimi’s?”

“Sounds better.”

After lunch they set up an interview with Torres in county lockup. The little tweaker was even more strung out than when they’d picked him up trying to score. But he’d had enough self-preservation left in him to lawyer up.

His attorney, Gerald Godwin, a wet behind the ears PD immediately launched into a bluster designed to overwhelm the world weary cops. David was not impressed. He introduced himself and Martinez, then he stated the date, time and location for the interview. Then he faced a belligerent Torres across the table.

“What probable cause did you have to pursue my client? He was in the park for therapeutic reasons. He had no reason to think the overzealous police would chase him down and assault him.”

“Just taking a walk in the park. That it, counselor?” David asked.

“Yeah, just taking a walk. Getting my, what do you call it, my constitution. Ain’t that protected?” Torres was bobbing and twitching, in full withdrawal mode.

“I think you mean constitutional, there Mr. Torres, and that’s not protected in this or any other country. Nice try, though.”

“Are you mocking my client?” Godwin asked.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, counselor.” David glanced at Martinez. “But we would like your client to explain how he was in possession of a gun that was used to kill a young woman, Maria Real and her six year old daughter, Adora Real.”

“But was the gun actually in his possession? As I understand it, you found the weapon in the park, on the ground. Not in my client’s possession.”

“Except we saw Mr. Torres ditch the weapon in question moments before we apprehended him, during the commission of another felony.”

“And what was that?”

“Purchasing a Schedule I drug from known drug dealers in an area known to be inhabited by a gang under an injunction by the City of Los Angeles. Any one in particular he’d like to start with?”

“I don’t know nothing about no ‘junction,” Torres said, his hands starting to shake. He kept licking his lips with a tongue that looked like sandpaper.

“You like a Coke, Mr. Torres?” David asked, knowing he was probably having a sugar crash to go along with his methamphetamine fit. “I can get you a pop, or a chocolate bar—”

Torres perked up at the mention of chocolate. He nodded eagerly. Martinez went to get the requested candy.

Both Torres and Godwin were silent while they waited for Martinez to come back. Once he did, Torres wolfed down the Snickers bar and guzzled the Coke, giving himself hiccups, but he seemed mellowed out by his snack.

Maybe he’d be more talkative.

“You’re in some serious shit, Mr. Torres. I hope you realize that.”

“I din’t do nothin’,” Torres said.

“We’ve got your gun. We’ve got your DNA, which I’m sure we’ll find somewhere in the vicinity of the bodies. We’ve even got your drug dealer. I’m sure he’ll love to squeal when we start talking about the kind of deal we can offer him.’