Street Rules (3 page)

“So? I still ain’t done nothin’.”

Frank pushed the door open, moving slowly, and told Placa to get in. Placa protested feebly but got in. She slunk down in the seat so no one would see her.

“What I done?”

“Nothin’. But there’s been enough blood spilled in your family lately. I don’t want to be the one to have to tell Claudia I left you here and some Playboys capped you.”

“Yeah,” Placa snorted, “you’d be all tore up.”

“I would,” Frank insisted, “and your sister’d kick the shit outta me then put a hex on me.”

She was pleased to see the corner of Placa’s mouth twitch. As they waited for the light to change, they both watched a Baby Playboy cross the street on a bike.

Frank teased, “Bet he stole that off a King,” and Placa immediately shot back, “That bitch wouldn’t be walkin’ if he stole that off a King.”

Moving through the intersection, Frank asked “How’s your mom doin’?”

” ‘Kay,” Placa shrugged.

“How about Tonio and your sister?”

” ‘Kay.”

“And your Uncle Luis?”

“I don’t know.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I don’t know.”

“See him Sunday?”

Placa shook her head.

“Since then?”

Again her head shook.

“You always were talkative,” Frank said. “You do that tag down the block?”

“Tagging’s illegal,” Placa responded ambiguously.

“Since when’s the law ever stopped you?”

Placa didn’t answer and Frank asked, “Still in school?”

“Sometimes.”

Frank nodded. They’d come into 52nd Street territory, and Placa put her hand on the door handle.

“How about Rolo? How’s he doing?”

That earned Frank a sideways glance.

“Why you wanna know for?”

“Just wondering,” Frank shrugged. “He’s your dog, ain’t he? Heard he took a knife a while ago.”

That wasn’t all Frank had heard. Rolo had lost a lung in that fight and word was he couldn’t fight anymore. Placa still used him for drive-bys and for peeping when they hit a liquor store or Quik Mart, but she was getting a lot of shit from the other Kings. They said he was too slow, that he couldn’t take care of himself and that somebody’d get hurt having to rescue him someday.

Placa said proudly, “He’s okay. He just needs to get his strength back.”

Pulling onto Placa’s street, Frank slowed in front of her house, studying the dark windows.

“Where is everybody?”

Placa just offered another shrug. Frank pulled a card out of her pocket and pressed it into Placa’s hand.

“You need anything, you call me.
Claro?”

No one ever looked a cop in south-central squarely in the eye so when Placa gave Frank her full attention she was taken aback by the intense scrutiny.

“Is that all?” Placa asked.

“You want me to tuck you into bed?”

“Naw, I just…”

Placa suddenly found the seats ripped upholstery fascinating. It was the opening Frank needed.

“What’s going on?”

Placa plucked a piece of foam then glanced at the street. There was a naked flash of pain, then it was gone.

“Nothin’.”

She jumped out of the car before anyone could recognize her in the strange company of the law. Frank waited until Placa was inside before accelerating through the quickening night. Fatigue and memories wrapped her in a thick fog. She’d watched Placa come up from toddler to feared gangster. It was a deep bloodline.

Her father and her uncle Julio had been OGs in the Westside Kings and her brother Chuey had claimed for 52nd Street after the Kings splintered into three fractious gangs. Claudia had been a revered Queen, but lost her standing when Placa’s father was shipped off to Chino for twenty-five years. Before she had her babies, Placa’s sister Gloria had been a fierce 52nd Street Queen. Frank remembered a rookie who rode with her when she was a field training officer. He’d sliced his finger to the bone patting Gloria’s hair down. While he was bleeding and wondering what the hell to do, Frank had suggested he check Gloria’s mouth to see if she had razors in there too.

Like a lot of bangers, Placa started her rise to ghetto stardom by spraying her gang’s name on anything that didn’t move. Her artwork was bold and inspired. It pleased the Kings and they made her a Baby Queen, but that insulted Placa. She’d already seen how the Kings treated Queens and she didn’t want any part of that abuse. She told the 52nd Street homeboys that she wanted to be jumped in like her brother Chuey. She would stand with them as a King or she would stand against them. The OGs had laughed, but they’d given her missions. Frank picked her up on a break-and-enter the day after her tenth birthday and that was only one of many infractions.

Placa’s reputation grew in proportion to her juvenile arrest records and on her twelfth birthday she was jumped into the Kings. She’d since risen steadily and Frank knew that the 52nd Street
vatos
didn’t make decisions without Placa’s council. That had happened once and the next day two Kings ended up at King/Drew with concussions and multiple compound fractures.

Frank was glad when she got to the Alibi that there was an empty booth. She snagged it, noting Johnnie already at the bar, an empty shot glass and a beer in front of him. He was arguing with Hunt, and Frank swore if he got into a fight she wouldn’t help him. Even as she thought it, she knew her promise was empty. Johnnie could be a pain in the ass but at least his intentions were good. Frank had no such faith concerning Hunt. She was glad to see Nancy approach her booth. She and Frank had been flirting since Frank was in Homicide. Nothing ever came of it, Frank made sure of that, but it was an amiable routine.

“How you doin’, hon?”

“I’m good, Nance. You?”

“I’m better now that you’re here. Coffee, scotch or stout?”

“Scotch. Double. Cobb salad and fries. Busy tonight?”

“Enough.”

Frank allowed herself the simple pleasure of Nancy’s ample ass in motion before turning her attention to a legal pad stuffed with notes. She had to squint at the letters to make them stop jumping. She skimmed Noah’s report with the kid in the closet, Julio Estrella’s youngest.

He’d been sleeping in his room before the shooting went down. When he’d gotten up to go to the bathroom he heard booming and yelling and ran into the kitchen. He saw his father and brother bleeding and a man in black clothes walking down the hallway. The kid had run into his mom’s closet. He thought it was a good place to hide because his sister couldn’t find him there when they played hide and go seek. When asked if he knew the man, the kid had said no. And when they asked if the man looked like his uncle Luis, the kid had been vague, but thought his uncle was smaller.

She flipped through more pages, scanning copies of her detective’s notes from dealers and crackheads, neighbors and friends. No one had seen Luis Estrella more recently than Sunday afternoon. That bothered Frank. Everyone described Luis as a friendly guy, always ready with a joke and a smile. His nickname was Payaso, clown, and he was always looking for a party. He was a small man with a limp from a broken ankle that had never mended well. Where other men tattooed gang insignia and weapons, Luis had branded himself with stars and was known to coo poetry at pretty girls. The squad was sniffing out gang affiliations but that was looking like a dead end. They still claimed, as all
veteranos
did, but it had been years since either Julio or Luis was actively involved with the Kings.

In a ‘hood where guns were as common as roaches, no one could recall Luis strapped and why should he be? Everyone liked him. It sounded like he’d made a good niche for himself — joker to the lords of the street, a threat to no one, loved by all. That he had suddenly disappeared meant two things to Frank, he was guilty or he was a witness. From all she’d heard about Luis in the last twenty-four hours, the latter seemed the most probable. He didn’t sound like a killer. In fact, the pit bull had been his. He’d rescued it as a puppy from a guy who fought dogs. The man was going to cut its throat because one of its paws was deformed. When Diego had told her that, she’d said, “Chalk one up for Johnnie.”

Luis didn’t fit the profile of a man who’d shoot his own dog, nonetheless his own family; the killing spree didn’t square with anything she’d heard about him. That his car had been at the scene meant he might have fled after the shooting started. Or maybe he’d come in on the middle of it, then grabbed his own gun for defense. He might have run then or he might have looked into the house, seen the carnage and taken off. Luis was a clown, not a fighter. He had to have known the shooter grossly outmatched him. It made sense that he’d get in his car and fly.

And that was another gnat buzzing in Frank’s ear. They’d talked to Claudia’s neighbors and two of them remembered seeing her brother’s junked Bonneville outside her house on Sunday night. Both wits pinned the time around nine PM, about fifteen minutes after the Estella’s had been gunned down. One saw a figure get out from the driver’s side but wouldn’t say more than that. It looked like a man in dark clothes, but at night, with the street lights shot out, the wit couldn’t even swear with certainty that the driver had been male. But they were both pretty sure about the Bonneville because of its size and coughing muffler.

Frank glanced around when Nancy brought her drink. She recognized lawyers, ADAs and detectives. Johnnie had peaceably wandered over to a table crowded with secretarial types and Hunt was hunched over the bar with a couple off-duty sticks. He was dressed in tight jeans that pegged over expensive boots and his muscles squeezed out from under a tight LAPD T-shirt. A black Stetson clung magically to the back of his head and his belt sported a silver buckle the size of a salad plate, the type cowboys won in rodeos. Frank thought he’d look more at home in a juke-joint than a bar full of suits. Usually the Figueroa uniforms favored a rougher bar called Red’s, and she wondered idly why Hunt spent so much time in the company of the suits he seemed to despise. Then it occurred to her he’d probably gotten eighty-sixed from Red’s.

When Nancy brought her salad, Frank ordered another double. The first drink had untied the knots in her shoulders and the second would undo the knots in her mind. She attacked her dinner, careful not to spill on the papers clamoring for attention.

While Frank and her crew had been catching up on sleep, a heads-up sheriff was comparing Luis Estrella’s old Bonneville to the one on his APB sheet. Through a not uncommon assortment of red tape and miscommunications, Frank didn’t hear about the car until Thursday afternoon. Given the antagonistic relationship between the LAPD and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Frank was glad she’d heard at all. Swearing more out of excitement than frustration, she and Noah grabbed jackets and headed out to Old Topanga Canyon Road.

The car was parked in an isolated turnout in a grove of eucalyptus trees. Thick chaparral rose steeply from the north shoulder of the road, and fell away to the south. It was hot and still in the scrub-covered hills and the air smelled of dust and heated plant oils. The car was dusty inside and out, loaded with all kinds of crap, like Luis had been living in it. They quickly poked through the litter, finding nothing more interesting than Luis’ works on the passenger seat and a clean Bowie knife. The trunk was locked and the keys were missing but it didn’t smell like they had pudding in a cup, or in civilian terms, a body in a trunk.

Noah tried to videotape the scene, but the camera battery was dead, as always. He settled on Polaroids while Frank sifted through eucalyptus leaves and old trash. As they waited for SID’s arrival, Frank scanned the random homes perched on the steep hills, noting the sparse traffic pattern. She wanted SID to process the trunk before they jimmied the lock. Depending on what they found inside, SID could either continue at the scene or have the car hauled back to the print shed to finish their evidence collection in a more optimal setting.

The SID van pulled up and Noah groaned when Dave Grummond’s gangly form emerged. He was a tall man, balding, thin, and vaguely reminiscent of a cadaver. He was born without a sense of humor and had never thought to cultivate one, but he was a meticulous forensic technician. Frank greeted him quietly, outlining the situation for him. Her idea was to dust the trunk area so they could pop it open. If there was a body inside, they’d process it
in situ
to preserve the evidentiary value. If not, they’d tow the vehicle to the LAPD print shed. Grummond nodded gravely. When he spoke, he sounded like a butler in Masterpiece Theatre.

“I should like to start by wanding with cyanoacrylate and RAM. I should think that would show up well against the dark paint while yielding as many prints as possible.”

“Whatever you think’s best,” Frank agreed, backing away so Grummond and his tech could get started.

Noah asked, “Aren’t you going to do the Rappenwhiph test first?”

Grummond frowned, “I don’t think I’m familiar with that test.”

Noah bent near the trunk and sniffed. He tapped the metal hood, listening to the hollow sound it made.

“No dead body,” he said. “It passed the rap an’ whiff.”

The older man studied Noah quizzically, then gave up, returning his attention to the laborious process of getting into his gloves. Noah grinned at Frank, delighted with himself. Frank shook her head and watched Grummond load cartridges into his Super Glue gun. When he was finished he walked all around the car, completing his circuit near the right rear bumper. Aiming his wand like a magician he released a mist of fumes and dye over the trunk’s surface area. Prints popped up like acne on a teenager.

While the tech held the light, Grummond started shooting them with his 1-to-l, methodically setting up each photograph.

“Jesus Christ,” Noah griped in Frank’s ear. “This isn’t Yosemite and he isn’t Ansel fucking Adams.”

Frank lifted her shoulders but made no move to rush the tech. Noah sighed and went back to toeing the leaves around the car. His impatience amused Frank. They’d always been a good team. Still were. Frank’s conservatism tempered Noah’s enthusiastic tendency to trample details while he rushed headlong into a case. In turn, Noah gave Frank the push she needed when she mired in too much caution and deliberation. The traits they carried into their professional roles applied to the personal as well. Noah was a good mirror for Frank. Because he had earned her elusive and implicit trust, he was able to tell her things that would have landed anyone else flat on their ass.