Authors: Gerald Petievich
Stepanovich unsnapped the walkie-talkie from the holder on his belt and pressed the button. "Stay where you are and tell us what they are doing."
"Roger."
"They're here for blood," Black said, thumbing green shells into the magazine of his shotgun.
Arredondo drew his revolver and snapped open the chamber to check the load. With a flick of the wrist he clicked the chamber shut.
There was the sound of radio static coming from the walkie-talkie. "They're getting out of the car," Fordyce said. "The driver is staying behind the wheel."
"They've got their balls up. They're gonna do it," Arredondo said.
Stepanovich said nothing, motioning to the others to follow him down the walkway leading toward the front of the apartment house. "We'll take 'em before they go upstairs. "
Black didn't move. "Arrest 'em now and they'll be home before we finish writing the report."
Stepanovich stopped.
"C.R.'s right," Arredondo said. "Greenie killed a little girl. Let White Fence give him some of his own medicine. "
Stepanovich, keyed up for the arrest, suddenly had another feeling an excitement akin to a kid playing hide and seek when the seekers are getting closer the stifled urge to both piss and yell at the top of his lungs at the same time.
"They're headed toward the steps," Fordyce said via radio, "Repeat. They are gonna do it."
Stepanovich slowly pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt, hesitating before pressing the transmit button. "Stepanovich to Fordyce. We're getting set up," he said, then released the button.
"You'd better hurry ... they're at the steps ... going up," Fordyce replied. "They're prowling."
Stepanovich lowered the volume on the walkie-talkie a few notches and clipped the radio back on his belt.
"They have to come down the same way," Stepanovich said. "We'll set up at the bottom of the stairs."
Using the shadows for cover, Black and Arredondo followed Stepanovich along a six-foot cinder block wall adjoining Greenie's apartment house. As the wall's elevation dropped a foot or so, Stepanovich could see Smokey Salazar and the others creeping along the dimly lit second floor landing and into a shadow where Greenie's apartment was situated.
"They're trying to figure out which apartment is Greenie's," Arredondo whispered.
Salazar's Chevy was parked in front of the apartment building next door, just out of sight of Greenie's apartment. There was a driver sitting behind the wheel. Stepanovich stopped the others and pointed to him. Crouching low, holding his shotgun balanced in one hand, he crept in the darkness along a row of Italian cypress trees leading to the curb. Peeking from behind the shrubbery, he could see Payaso staring straight ahead.
Without hesitation, Stepanovich moved across the parkway, keeping down out of Payaso's view, and around the car to the driver's side. Arredondo was behind him.
Stepanovich poked the barrel of the shotgun in the driver's window and touched Payaso's temple. "Police, motherfucker," he whispered. "Keep your mouth shut. "
Payaso raised his hands slowly and Stepanovich adjusted the shotgun slightly to allow Arredondo to open the door. Arredondo's left hand cupped Payaso's mouth. He pulled him out of the car and to the asphalt.
Arredondo handcuffed Payaso quickly, then with a knee in his back, held his revolver to his head to keep him quiet.
Stepanovich immediately hurried back to the wall. Quickly he and Black climbed over it and, staying close to the apartment building for cover, edged toward the stairs leading to the second floor walkway. The bottom few steps were illuminated by the harsh light of an outdoor fixture attached to the corner of the building. He stopped. "Right here," he whispered. "They'll have to come down into the light." He motioned and Black, keeping his eyes on the well lit target area, moved a few feet away from him so they wouldn't shoot each other by accident.
From the second floor landing there was suddenly the unmistakable crack of rapid gunshots, screams, breaking glass, and male shouts of "White Fence!"
A thunder of frantic footsteps came along the landing and down the stairs.
Stepanovich, standing in the darkness a few feet from the steps, raised his shotgun to shoulder level and aimed. Smokey Salazar and two other men, all carrying guns, rushed down the stairs into the harsh illumination.
For a millisecond after Salazar spotted him, Stepanovich thought he detected a look of recognition on his face. Salazar's eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped. He could have been any creature in flight suddenly confronted by impending doom.
Stepanovich pulled the trigger. "One," he shouted to himself as he'd been trained to do at the police academy. The sound of shotgun blast mixed with that of human shrieks. He cranked the slide. "Two" and the world became muzzle flashes and deafening blasts as Stepanovich worked the action of his shotgun. Black was firing rapidly. "Three."
Bodies tumbled down the cement steps.
Black dropped his empty shotgun and it clattered to his feet. He pulled his revolver and advanced forward, firing alternately at the prostrate shooters.
"Hold it!" Stepanovich yelled.
Black stopped firing. The air was filled with the odor of gunsmoke. Stepanovich dropped his shotgun and pulled his revolver. Holding it in the two handed combat position, he moved closer.
The light was glaring on the three victims. Smokey Salazar was convulsing, holding his groin. The other two men were lying askew, unmoving. They had almost bloodless holes in their respective faces and chests. Stepanovich remembered the homicide school axiom: dead bodies don't bleed.
"Ahhhh," Salazar moaned. He was crying, whimpering.
Black holstered his revolver and knelt beside him. He pulled Salazar's hands behind him and ratcheted handcuffs onto his wrists. "Don't cry, fuckface," he said.
Fordyce's nervous falsetto voice came through the walkie-talkie. "Shots fired! Man down! Eighteenth and Toberman. Requesting paramedics and a field supervisor."
From upstairs there was the sound of a woman moaning.
Stepanovich raced past the dead and wounded and up the steps. Moving cautiously along the landing, he made his way to Greenie's apartment. There was shattered glass on the landing in front of the open door. He stepped inside. Greenie was on the carpet holding a blood soaked towel to his wife's head. A man was lying in a fetal position on the kitchen floor. Another man, shirtless and bloody, his eyes wide, was crawling across the floor. There was the wail of sirens in the distance.
Greenie looked up at Stepanovich. "My wife."
Stepanovich stood there, breathing hard, saying nothing. His left hand inadvertently touched the burning barrel of his shotgun and he yanked it away. He moved to a telephone hidden on the bare floor among empty beer cans. His hand was shaking as he picked up the receiver and began dialing Harger's number. Then he thought better of it and set the receiver down.
Retreating out the door, he hurried down the steps a few feet past the bodies to Black. Arredondo approached from the car, dragging the handcuffed Payaso. Payaso's shirt was torn open and his torso was covered with bandages.
"Those are my homeboys," Payaso cried. "You killed my homeboys."
Arredondo shoved Payaso facedown in the middle of the lawn facing away from the bodies. He moved closer to Stepanovich.
Stepanovich turned to Arredondo. "Your prisoner," he whispered. "What did he see?"
Arredondo shook his head. "Nothing. He was face down in the street when the shooting occurred."
Fordyce hurried toward them from the motor home. Suddenly he stopped, staring at the bodies.
"What did you see?" Stepanovich said.
Fordyce couldn't take his eyes off the men lying on the steps. Stepanovich grabbed his arm. "Did you hear what I said?"
"I saw you guys move toward the steps and the shooters coming down," Fordyce whispered back. "Then all hell broke loose."
A police car, siren wailing, pulled up at the curb, but the detectives ignored it.
"You heard us yell, 'Police,' right?" Black asked.
Arredondo nodded. "That's the way I remember it, amigo."
Stepanovich turned to Fordyce. "And you couldn't hear anything because you were using the radio at the time. "
Fordyce was still staring at the bodies. Stepanovich touched his arm. "Isn't that right?"
A police car with flashing lights and siren blaring squealed its brakes as it came to a stop in front of the apartment house.
"I won't contradict what you say," Fordyce said.
"Black and I are the only ones who know what happened at the steps," Stepanovich said to the others. "Now and forever. Is that understood?"
Arredondo, then Fordyce nodded.
Two uniformed officers with drawn revolvers rushed across the lawn. They stopped and stared at the bodies.
"CRASH special unit," Stepanovich said. "We've had an officer involved shooting." He pointed to Payaso: "Put this prisoner in your car, then block off the street."
By the time the ambulances arrived, occupants of the other apartments in the area were outside gawking, and a crowd of onlookers two deep had formed across the street.
Stepanovich noticed Fordyce, with head bowed, move away from the others to the cypress trees, lean at the waist, and loudly vomit.
****
TEN
Harger arrived as Smokey Salazar and Greenie's wife were being taken away in ambulances. Eighteenth Street was a maze of flashing red lights, traffic stanchions, and yellow evidence tape.
Stepanovich met Harger at the curb and led him under evidence tape to the bodies. The captain made a point of examining the dead closely, then came to his feet.
"Do we have any problems?" he said, keeping his voice low enough so that even other policemen standing nearby couldn't hear.
"They fired at Black and me. We fired back," Stepanovich said.
"The shooting team will ask you why you fired so many times," Harger said. "Those people look like hamburger. "
"They kept moving as if trying to shoot, so we continued to fire," Stepanovich lied.
Harger gave him a brotherly slap on the shoulder. "Very good," he said. "Keep it simple."
Later, with the area sealed off for investigation, paramedics and coroner's deputies milled about. A station wagon pulled to the curb near where Stepanovich was standing. A television camera crew and a young TV reporter, a curly haired blond man who looked like a male model, climbed out and approached Harger. Camera lights were turned on as the reporter held a microphone close to Harger's mouth and asked what had happened.
Harger cleared his throat. "Officers of the L.A. Police CRASH Gang Task Force were on routine patrol when they heard gunshots and observed men with guns running from a residence. At that time the officers identified themselves as police officers and were fired on by three armed males. The officers returned fire. Two of the suspects were killed and one was wounded. We are not releasing the names of the dead and wounded until next of kin are notified."
Later that night, the task force's basement office was a maelstrom of activity phones ringing and being answered, Harger escorting command level officers into his office for briefings, the robbery homicide division shooting team investigators interviewing the members of the task force one at a time. As all that went on about him, Stepanovich sat at his desk writing and editing his report, making sure it was concise and free of any equivocal language that could be attacked later by the money hungry attorneys whom he knew would represent the families of the deceased in suits against the police department. When completed, the report read as follows:
SOURCE OF ACTIVITY:
Acting on information received from a confidential informant, officers of the Hollenbeck Division CRASH Gang Task Force were routinely deployed in a gang crime prevention detail near the 2900 block of Eighteenth Street, a known gang area.
ACTIVITY:
At approximately 1910 hours officers observed known gang member Arturo Salazar, a.k.a. Smokey, and two males (later identified as Hernandez, Ralph and Nunez, Luis) approach Apartment 203 at the location carrying handguns. Believing that a crime was in progress, Officers Stepanovich, Jose, Serial #613845, and Black, C. R., Serial #992318, approached the location to investigate. At this time, shots were heard and the suspects attempted to run from the location. Believing that a crime had occurred, the officers immediately identified themselves to the suspects as police officers. The suspects opened fire on the investigating officers. Officers Stepanovich and Black returned fire, hitting all three suspects. Hernandez and Nunez were pronounced dead at the scene.
Salazar was transported to the jail ward of the L.A, County General Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds.
(signed)
Stepanovich, Jose
Serial #613845
Stepanovich realized Harger was looking over his shoulder.
"Fine report," Harger whispered. "Short and sweet." As Stepanovich turned to face him, Harger rested a brotherly hand on his shoulder. "The shooting team is ready for you now. I've talked with the Chief. He's very pleased with what went down, but he doesn't want it to look like the task force was staked out waiting for a crime to occur. You were staked out, but it was for the purpose of crime prevention. Prevention is the key word." He winked and cuffed Stepanovich on the shoulder.