The Innocents Read online

  “Hang the phone up and get the door. It’s Mrs. Espinoza. I called her and asked her to come over. She’s looking for a job and jumped at this one.”

  “Mrs. Espinoza? A job? What job?”

  “Son, you have to go to work, and you can’t take the baby with you. Get the door.”

  All of a sudden I realized everything just might work out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LENNOX SHERIFF’S STATION

  I SAT AT a desk, one of five in a small office, my mind reaching far out into the future trying to rectify what it’d be like to have a daughter in high school.

  Lieutenant Robby Wicks entered the small squad room, moving fast. He stood at the front of the room and looked over his team: four newly minted detectives chosen for this new idea, The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Violent Crimes Team. Organized to target the most violent criminals preying upon the victims of Los Angeles County. The team only answered to a Deputy Chief and was allowed to pick its own targets. In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d be chosen for such a position, especially with only two years’ patrol under my belt. The other three deputies in the room, who had at least five times the experience, gave up choice deputy positions to be there. We’d been handpicked by Lieutenant Wicks.

  I sat up in my chair and tried hard to shake off my thoughts of Baby Girl Johnson. I needed to focus or risk losing this job.

  Wicks stood with one thumb hooked in the front of his belt, his other hand—his gun hand—hung loose at his side, always there, always ready to draw his custom .45 Colt Commander. I’d only known him a short time, only really met him twice, but the stories of his exploits stood out as legends, old stories that grew bolder and wilder with each passing year. He wore his brown hair combed back, dry without grease. His mustache didn’t meet department dress and grooming standards; the tips went almost down to the edge of his chin. The gunfighter mustache. The .45 was also an unauthorized weapon. No supervisor who came in contact with him said a thing about these gross violations. Wicks carried too much juice with the higher-up brass. No one bucked Wicks.

  He said nothing and looked at each of us in turn, then reached over and flipped the cover to a large pad on an easel, exposing a blown-up booking photo of an African American crook. No one needed to read the name written in black felt tip underneath. This guy had made every newscast on all the networks for the last forty-eight hours. Damien Frakes Jr., a Holly Street Crip, a parolee at large.

  Detective Johnny Gibbs, who’d transferred in from Metro and sat to my right, said, “Now we’re talkin.’ I thought we might be going after this smoke.”

  Wicks stared at Johnny and said nothing. Johnny looked around and saw me next to him. He reached over, placed his hand on my shoulder, and said, “No offense, bro. You know I didn’t mean anything by it, right?”

  I didn’t like his hand on my shoulder nor his comment but didn’t want to cause a scene. I took up Wicks’ method, said nothing, and looked back to our boss.

  Wicks’ left hand slapped the easel. “All right, here it is, and I’m going to give it to you guys straight. This is the most violent asshole out there right now. He held up that jewelry store in Torrance and shot dead the owner and two patrons. A Redondo Beach copper inadvertently got onto him on a routine traffic stop. Frakes stepped out of his G-ride and shot up the patrol car, wounding the officer. This is the guy we should be going after. This is the guy I planned to go after. But it’s just not going to work out that way and I’m sorry.”

  The other three detectives groaned.

  He gave us the news as if it were some kind of death notification, and that’s the way we took it.

  Wicks continued. “Listen, it’s not your fault. It’s mine, and I promise you I’m going to fix this.”

  If anyone could fix it, Robby Wicks could.

  He said, “I was promised absolute autonomy with this team. They promised me that I could pick our own targets, and what happens the first day? We get redirected.”

  He let that soak in. Then, “As a supervisor, as your leader, I am not supposed to show this side of me. I am supposed to accept this new target with quiet dignity and do as I’m told. I’m supposed to sell this new target to you guys as the real deal.

  “I won’t do it. I want to be totally honest with you at all times and I hope you’ll do the same with me. I want us to work as a cohesive team. I also want you to know exactly where I stand so when it’s time to take care of business, you’re not worrying about what the boss is going to say. I want you to act. I want you to think on your feet. I want you to pull that trigger.”

  He hesitated to let that sink in. This wasn’t the kind of speech I’d expected. I didn’t know what I’d expected.

  Wicks said, “And most of all . . . most of all, this is going to be a shotgun team. That means I want—” He looked to the open office door. He quickly crossed the few steps over and closed it.

  I squirmed in my seat and wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what came next. Secrets in law enforcement usually didn’t bode well for the ones tasked with keeping them.

  Wicks came back and stood right next to our small cluster of four desks; his heavy aftershave moved with him. He again looked at all of us. “Each of you was chosen for one reason and one reason only. You like to hunt men and you’re not afraid to pull the trigger. A shotgun team means just that. We are going to run and gun. We are going to drop the hammer on anyone who does not immediately and unequivocally give up. Anyone who wants to resist, anyone who throws down on us, I don’t care if all they’ve got in their hand is a comb, we are going to gun them. You understand?”

  He made it sound so glamorous, so righteous; I wanted to feel proud to be a part of this new idea and didn’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I would have if I hadn’t been a father worried about much more important things.

  Wicks said, “This is a violent-crimes team that chases confirmed criminals. Animals who have murdered in cold blood the folks we were sworn to protect and didn’t. We are here to right that wrong. So, if any of you have any reservations at all, if you don’t have the guts for this, now’s the time to leave.” He pointed to the door.

  He waited a moment, as if expecting half of us to get up and slink out with our tails between our legs.

  That last part about keeping the community safe got my attention. I was in for accomplishing that task.

  Johnny Gibbs said, “I’m not going anywhere. This is exactly where I want to be.”

  The other two, like me, only nodded, choosing to keep silent until we had a better grasp of this man before we opened our mouths and made fools of ourselves as Gibbs tended to do.

  Unlike the others, I didn’t belong in that room. I’d never shot anyone.

  But Wicks was right. I had hunted a man, and Wicks had been there when I caught him. Only I wasn’t proud of the way I did it. And that’s probably why Wicks chose me for his team.

  Almost a year ago now, I’d investigated the death of a young girl. The memory of it swooped back in and snatched at my breath. I was the father of a baby girl, which made the memory all the more frightening.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LAST YEAR I was assigned a code three to a traffic accident, car vs. pedestrian. I beat the paramedics and other patrol cars to the scene. A little girl by the name of Jenny was down in the street, knocked right out of the crosswalk, knocked right out of her shiny black patent leather shoes.

  The night was hot. Groups of people clustered on the sidewalk, quiet, pointing, as if I wouldn’t see Jenny.

  At first I thought Jenny was some little girl’s doll tossed haphazardly from a passing car.

  No first aid or medical attention was going to help her.

  Half her face was mashed and disfigured; the other half was perfect, angelic in the scant aura of the streetlight.

  There was very little blood.

  Mercifully, she died on impact.

  Her blue gingham dress masked the horror underneath.

  Sweaty Marty said later that
he came up and spoke to me but I was “zoned out” and that “I had the blood spore with my nose to the ground.”

  From the debris field—the bits of headlight glass and aluminum trim knocked off the car on impact—I knew the car was old and large. Then I noticed the asshole had hit poor Jenny hard enough that her little body had ruptured the radiator. I started following the water trail in the street, a trail that would be gone in minutes, evaporated into the hot summer night. The swath started out large and wide and narrowed when the murderer picked up speed, as the coward fled.

  I ran.

  The water narrowed further and then turned to sporadic blotches.

  Then to droplets.

  At an intersection, I lost it entirely. He’d caught the green, only I didn’t know which way he went. I ran in a big arc. Cars skidded to a stop to avoid the tall, black, uniformed deputy who’d lost his head and was running in a circle in the middle of a busy intersection.

  My flashlight dimmed as it started to fail.

  I thought I picked up the trail headed north, which meant a left turn. I got down on one knee and still wasn’t sure. I got down on my hands, in a prone position, and sniffed. I got up and ran in a full sprint, fighting the heat that now helped the suspect to escape, drying up the evidence.

  The footrace worked.

  At the next intersection, the murderer caught the red and left behind a puddle. He continued on through, went two blocks, and turned on Spring Street. He’d been close to home, a mile and a half away, when he ran Jenny down.

  The water turned rusty and led up a concrete drive to a garage door closed and padlocked. I took a minute to catch my breath and tried to shove back the lion that wanted to get even, to make things right.

  In the academy, they called it “your professional face.” No matter what happened, you had to put aside your personal feelings and be professional.

  I went up to the door, sweat stinging my eyes, my uniform wet under the arms. I wiped my eyes clear on my shirtsleeve and left a sweat smudge.

  I knocked.

  The door immediately opened. The room on the inside was dark, the screen door between us. I couldn’t see him and didn’t know if this man—who, without conscience had run down a defenseless little girl in the crosswalk—had a weapon.

  His rich and deep-timbre voice said, “Can I help you, Officer?”

  “Yes, I would like you to come out here and open your garage door.”

  Silence, then: “Heh, heh. I don’t think so, Officer. You don’t have a search warrant.”

  I carefully, with as little movement as possible, reached up and tried the screen door.

  Locked.

  He started to close the inside door.

  “Wait.”

  “Yes? Is there something else, Uncle Tom? Something you want to do for whitey, the people you serve?” He didn’t try to mask the anger and hate in his tone. He was safe and he knew it; swaddled, nice and comfortable, in the shroud of the law.

  The next second, I sniffed it.

  Alcohol.

  A drunk driver.

  The scent of metabolized alcohol set something off inside me, snapping the last straw. The professional face came off.

  I roared.

  I shoved both hands in through the screen and took hold of a large black man wearing a white Stetson cowboy hat. I pulled him through the screen door and out onto the ground. I put the boot to him.

  Robby Wicks, a sergeant at the time, had followed me in his patrol car. He pulled me off. He had to slug me in the stomach to bring me out of my blind rage.

  But that wasn’t how he’d saved my bacon.

  As a supervisor, he had witnessed a crime I’d perpetrated when I took the cowboy into custody with excessive force. Wicks was obligated to stop me then turn me in for felony prosecution.

  No, the way he’d really saved me came after he got everything calmed down with med aid responding for the suspect. He told me I’d done a hell of a job tracking the car, that he’d never seen anything like it, the tenacity, the perseverance. Then he helped with the story, the way it would be written, the way the courts would accept it, and, at the same time, save my career and let me get at least some token of justice for Jenny.

  A year later, Robby was transferred to run the newly formed violent crimes task force and specifically asked for me to be on his team.

  Back in the squad room, Gibbs said, “If we’re not going to chase Frakes, then what is our first assignment?”

  Wicks looked at Gibbs, and for a moment, said nothing.

  Gibbs wasn’t going to last.

  Wicks said, “Our assignment, gentlemen, is a special handle. A request from the Taj Mahal to recapture one that got away. A smalltime hood, a paperhanger who escaped from Chino Prison.”

  I couldn’t help it, the words slipped out of my mouth: “Ah, shit, not a paperhanger, a no-nothing forgery convict.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  LIEUTENANT WICKS IGNORED my comment. “That’s right, an escaped prisoner from CIM, California Institute for Men. The state prison in Chino. But you see, I have something else I have to do. Something real important. I have to get a haircut.”

  By that he meant he wouldn’t be the diligent, kowtowing lieutenant and do what they asked of him. He’d let his team handle this little problem that didn’t require a lieutenant, especially one of Wicks’ stature. Not being in on the takedown would send a message to the brass.

  He must have read the disgust in my expression. He came over and stood in front of my desk. “I promise you, it will not always be like this. I’m taking a meeting with the chief to iron out this little glitch. In my absence, Bruno, you’ll be running the team on this operation.”

  My mouth sagged open. “You can’t mean that.”

  “Weren’t you listening? We’re a team. When out in the field, we’re all equals. Every one of you will have your chance to be case agent and call the shots. This first go-’round is yours, Bruno. Don’t screw it up.” He waved his finger at the others. “And I expect all of you to listen to Bruno the same as if his words were mine. He calls the play. Everyone got it?”

  We all nodded.

  “Good, that’s it until three o’clock this afternoon. Go to the range and shoot and then clean your guns. We’ll be going to the range a lot, so get used to it.”

  The four of us stood.

  “Bruno, hang back a minute, would you?”

  The other three hesitated and then continued on out of the small office.

  The door clicked shut. I stood by my desk. Wicks took a step closer, within a foot, and right up into my personal space. His eyes didn’t leave mine, as if he were searching my soul for some sort of hidden truth. He reached into his suit coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “This is the guy, Pedro Armendez. He was in Chino for PC 470, forgery. He has priors for grand theft auto and one strong-arm robbery ten years ago. He’s a heroin hype hanging paper to support his habit.”

  I fought the urge to take a step back. I took the paper and unfolded it. Armendez looked like your typical hype, with dirty hair and a gaunt face pocked with acne scars and dark rings under his eyes. He looked scared at the time of the booking photo and probably didn’t do well in a correctional environment.

  Wicks said, “He was in the low mod at Chino and went over the fence yesterday afternoon.”

  I nodded.

  Wicks said, “Questions?”

  “Why me? Why’d you put me out front like that with these guys? I don’t have half the experience they do. They have investigative experience where I’ve only worked the street. They’re not going to like it.”

  He moved in closer yet, right up in my face. His breath was peppermint fresh. “I don’t give one shit what they like.” He poked me in the chest. “You want the job or not? Just say the word, my friend, and you’re out.”

  “You already know the answer to that.”

  With this job, I had the opportunity to really effect change in the violent neighborhood where I grew u
p. Not to mention how proud Dad had looked when I told him of my appointment to the team. That moment was now tarnished with a child out of wedlock—even though Dad didn’t say anything or let his expression reveal his true feelings, I knew.

  “Good. This afternoon at three, meet SIU, parole’s special investigations unit, in the parking lot of Industry Station. They know where this punk’s girlfriend lives. Set up surveillance on her and keep on her twenty-four/seven until this guy pops. I expect updates at least every eight hours—if it even goes that long. I don’t think it will. You page me, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Page the team, let them know about the meet. Do your homework on this guy and work up a package on him. I know you can do this.”

  “I understand.”

  Wicks nodded and hesitated as if thinking something over. “What kind of gun are you carrying?”

  “The department issue, a .38 Smith and Wesson model 15 Combat Masterpiece.”

  “Ammo?”

  “Regulation, hundred-and-fifteen-grain semi-jacketed, plus P hollow points.”

  “Backup?”

  I stepped back and picked my foot up, put my boot on the desk. I pulled up my pant leg to show the ankle holster. “A model 60 Chief, five shot.”

  Did he do this to the others or just me because of my lack of experience?

  He shook his head. “That’s a rookie move. The whole idea in having a backup is in case you have to fight over your primary weapon. And if you’re in a fight for your life, you can’t afford to pick up your foot to get to your gun. That’s your entire foundation for balance. You’ll lose for sure. And we never lose. Especially not on my team.”

  I didn’t like being called a rookie, even though I believed him to be correct. “Then tell me.”

  “What I said before, I meant it. This is a shotgun team. We are going to get into violent confrontations, and you’re going to have to get ready for it.” He pointed at my ankle holster. “Not only with the proper equipment”—he poked my forehead with his finger—“but up here as well. I’m worried about you, Bruno. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”