Harbor Nocturne (24 page)

Hector took a sip. “It’s okay.”

And then Markov said, “How would you like forty thousand dollars?”

Hector almost spilled his wine before muttering, “I’m not plotting with nobody to ice Mr. Kim! I already said.”

“Of course not. Forty thousand with an additional ten-thousand-dollar bonus if you find Lita Medina in the next three days
and
if the dangerous situation is successfully concluded by Mr. Kim. I think you are right that the police will soon be looking for him. And by the way, I do not even know where he is right now. Probably with a lady friend of his in Koreatown, I should think.”

“Fifty thousand dollars jist for the location of the Mexican dancer?” Hector said, needing to hear it again.

“Only if you can do it in within three days
and
if Kim concludes the matter satisfactorily,” Markov said. “Time is of the essence. If you do not succeed, I am afraid that I may be liquidating all of my investments for fifty cents on the dollar and leaving Hollywood quickly and forever. They say that Costa Rica is very pleasant and not expensive.”

Hector figured that his mentioning Costa Rica meant that it would be the last place he’d go. Then he thought about fifty large. A stake until he got back on his feet. Enough to buy time to find a new hustle. Actually, when the undercover peg-leg cop had been trying to do his sting, he’d brought up something that Hector had already heard good things about: the illegal video poker machines. Hector wondered if fifty grand could get him started in that currently thriving enterprise.

Hector said, “If I find her in three days and give her up to you, you’ll order Mr. Kim to pay her off, right?”

“Fair enough,” Markov said. “Then do we have a deal?”

“I’m down,” Hector said. “But we gotta work out how and when the money is paid to me, and you gotta guarantee the girl won’t be getting the Daisy treatment.”

“She will not,” Markov said. “And in any case, what happened to Daisy could have been an accident. That kind of unintended thing can occur in the heat of the moment when passion overtakes reason.”

Hector lit a cigarette while driving back down from Mount Olympus, past all the cypress trees that had been used to beautify and sell the development. And he thought, They really are just hoodlums. Markov and Kim had seemed so powerful and impressive to him before all this. He’d been in awe of Markov in particular, with his nightclub and massage parlor. But now that the squeeze was on, they reminded him of the catch on the Pedro fishing boats. Those glorified pimps, Markov and Kim, were thrashing around like the mackerel trapped by the gill nets.

SEVENTEEN

M
ost of the
next day was spent cleaning the house. Lita Medina had been in the Babich home long enough to be a bit assertive when she saw Brigita Babich breaking out the cleaning equipment early in the morning, and Brigita reluctantly allowed her guest to pitch in. Even before Dinko was out of bed, he could hear the vacuum going in the living room and his mother and Lita laughing at Ollie the cat, who was attacking the dustcloth Brigita was using to polish the walnut coffee table.

Dinko came sleepily into the living room barefoot and shirtless, wearing only faded jeans, and saw the tornado of dust motes swirling against the glare of the rising summer sun, which was pouring through the picture window.

“Why don’t you just roll up that cat hair and take it to the homeless shelter,” Dinko said. “They could stuff their lumpy mattresses with it.”

“Why don’t you just help us work?” his mother replied wryly.

To her astonishment, Dinko said, “The windows could use a once-over. I’ll get some paper towels.”

She’d been joking with a son who had never so much as picked up his clothes from the floor of his bedroom, and who had to be nagged to simply haul the trash receptacles to the street for pickup. But in a few minutes he was outside on the front porch spraying the picture window, and doing a pretty good job of polishing the glass without smears.

“This is a miracle,” Brigita said to Lita.

“Sorry,” Lita said, indicating she did not understand.

Brigita remembered the Spanish word. She said, “We must offer a prayer of thanks to Our Lady of Guadalupe for
el milagro
. Dinko is actually working!”

Lita understood that, and they both laughed while Dinko made comical faces at them through the window.

The three of them worked hard for an hour, and then with apologies to Lita for a late breakfast, Brigita entered the kitchen to prepare the first huge meal of the day. Lita followed her and squeezed fresh orange juice.

Lita and Dinko were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, and Brigita was frying eggs when Dinko said to Lita, “With those wheels you should wear cutoffs all the time.”

“Wheels?” Lita said.

“He’s complimenting your pretty legs,” Brigita said, “in his uncouth way.”

“I got bags full of couth,” Dinko said. “I’m a Pedro pirate.”

Lita looked quizzically to Brigita to translate, and she said, “The pirate is the mascot at San Pedro High School.” She added, “Which was where he ended up after spending three years at Catholic school.”

“Got tired of those holy Joes and Janes pushing us around,” Dinko said. “Besides, I didn’t figure I needed a Catholic school diploma to work on the docks. I liked saying I belonged to a crew of pirates. I had a pirate on my T-shirt and my baseball cap.”

Lita said, “Do you like the job on the docks, Dinko?”

“In a weird way, I really do,” he answered. “My father was a longshoreman, and his father, too. It’s different now, though.”

“How?” Lita asked, refilling Dinko’s coffee cup.

“It’s about sixty percent . . .” He hesitated, trying to decide whether to say “Hispanic” or “Latino,” but finally just said, “Mexican.”

“Is true?” she said. “Men from Mexico?”

“No,” he said. “We call everybody Mexican if their ancestors came from there. Or somewhere near there.”

“But they are Americans, no?” Lita said.

“Yes, honey, they are,” Brigita interjected. “He should’ve said that the union is about sixty percent Hispanic nowadays.”

“Is a problem, yes?” Lita said to Dinko. “Too many people there that look like me?”

“Nobody looks like you,” Dinko said. “Almost every woman in L.A. County would kill to look like you.”

Brigita said, “People like Dinko feel . . . not so comfortable when they work around too many people not like themselves.”

“I understand,” Lita said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Dinko explained. “I got lotsa union buddies that’re Mexican-American, but we don’t have many that’re
real
Mexicans.” Then he thought about it and asked, “What do real Mexicans like you call our Mexican-Americans anyways?”

Lita shrugged and said artlessly, “We call them gringos, same like you.”

Brigita and Dinko exploded in laughter, and Lita flashed a good-natured smile but really didn’t understand the humor in what she’d said.

“You’re priceless, Lita,” Brigita said, wiping tears from her eyes.

“What means ‘priceless’?” Lita asked.

“It means that you’re worth everything in the world to us,” Dinko said, taking her hand in his. “And that’s the truth.”

Brigita put the eggs on a platter with the ham slices, and felt the worry growing in her heart. This was all happening too quickly. It was
much
too soon. Yes, she was an adorable girl, but they hardly knew each other!

Hector had had another very bad night. With all the worry he was experiencing, mingled with the excitement of earning fifty grand, he needed extra zannies to sleep, and he felt like shit when he woke up at noon. He attempted to read the morning paper but couldn’t focus. No matter how many times he tried to revisit recent events to determine what he’d done wrong, he could not come up with much.

The night with Basil and the crazy quack had been foisted on him. He hadn’t asked for it. And that had brought him into direct contact with undercover cops. So now his name was in a written report, or on a bulletin board, or in a police computer, or however the fuck the cops did it these days.

And as for the so-called conspiracy to help Kim get his smuggled slopes out of the storage yard, he hadn’t done anything but talk to a Crip and set up a meeting that never worked out. How was that so wrong? Despite what Markov claimed, he didn’t believe he could ever be convicted of anything involving the deaths of those people, but he still might get busted for it along with Kim and Markov. And he might get indicted on a RICO statute or on a state charge of conspiracy, involving the massage parlor and Club Samara, where they were running whores and evading income tax. That much might happen to him. He could still end up in state or federal prison for a few years.

It made his stomach burn and gave him a headache. He had an overpowering urge to “get back to town,” which was what all the old-timers like his parents and uncles and aunts called returning to Pedro. He truly wanted to get out of Hollywood and get back to town, and stay there for a while. And he would too, if that old pimp hadn’t put fifty grand on the table. Now what choice did he have?

There were two reasons to be sad at roll call that day. Of course, the first was that Chester Toles had unceremoniously retired. Regardless of how often they’d bitched about him kissing off calls, along with anything that might require tedious paperwork, now that he was gone forever, it almost felt like a death in the ranks.

The thumping of the baby killer was the talk of the station, and it triggered much speculation as to which version was closest to the truth, the arrestee’s or Chester’s. Most of the experienced coppers on Watch 5 figured that there was some truth in both versions. What everyone really liked, and what made them proud of the old Unicorn, was the way he’d told the FID investigator to stuff it and had walked out of the interview room and into the civilian world to enjoy the pension he’d earned.

Sergeant Murillo suggested at roll call that Watch 5 should wait a couple of months until the FID investigation had chilled, and then organize a retirement party for Chester Toles. Like most street cops, something in their natures made them admire Chester for doing what they’d all fantasized about doing at various times in their careers, for lesser reasons than Chester had that day. The Unicorn’s partner and frequent critic, Fran Famosa, said she’d take the responsibility of organizing the party as soon as Sergeant Murillo thought the time was right.

And then came the second part of the sad roll call. Velma Longstreet, a former Watch 5 copper who’d transferred downtown to Burglary Special Section after being appointed as a detective, had shot herself at a Venice Beach condo she shared with her fiancé, a detective from Major Crimes Division. There was nothing like a cop suicide to silence a raucous roll call or make an already somber roll call more grave. And, of course, there was the inevitable message from West Bureau about suicide signs that should be watched for, and encouragement for all to schedule a confidential appointment with a Department psychologist at Behavioral Science Services at the first sign of unusual depression, either in themselves or in a partner.

It wasn’t just that a cop suicide brought forth sadness; it also instilled fear, because every man and woman in the room knew that the national police officer suicide rate was sometimes five times the rate of police officers being killed on duty. That many more murdered themselves than were murdered by others. Cops referred to the impulse toward self-destruction as “the Coppers’ Disease.” And for a moment at least, members of the midwatch looked at each other and wondered, Could anything ever make me do that? Could it ever happen to
me
?

Sergeant Murillo didn’t have any jokes or stories for them to take to the streets, not on that evening. The only thing he said was that if anyone got a call or saw any unusual activity in east Hollywood at Shanghai Massage or Club Samara, they should report it to Detective Villaseñor. And then descriptions of Hector Cozzo and his red Mercedes SL were given to the watch, along with the caveat that he was not a suspect in the murder of the strip club dancer Soo Jeong but was a person of interest. Especially if he was accompanied by a big, middle-aged Korean whose name might be William Kim.

“That last name narrows it down to half the Koreatown phone book,” Flotsam said. “In fact, the description fits one of the FID people that came out here to jack up Chester Toles. Maybe it’s him.”

Mel Yarashi said to Flotsam, “The FID guy’s not Korean. He’s a Buddhahead like me, from Little Tokyo. His family’s owned a restaurant in J-Town for fifty years.”

Flotsam said wearily, “Koreatown, Thai Town, J-Town, and Chinatown, which happens to be full of Vietnamese these days. What’s the difference, dude?”

“Sergeant, I demand that you cut a face sheet on this round-eyed surfer scum for racial insensitivity!” Mel Yarashi cried out to Sergeant Murillo. “And I’ll go on a hunger strike if you refuse! Except for Bessie’s burritos. I gotta have them.”

“Let’s go to work,” Sergeant Murillo said, at least able to send them to the streets with a semblance of a smile. They all touched the Oracle’s picture before leaving the room.

That day of housecleaning turned into a very late spring cleaning, with every window in the house being washed inside and out, floors waxed, bathrooms scrubbed top to bottom, and even the organizing of pantry and refrigerator items.

Dinko was exhausted by late afternoon, and so was his mother. Lita Medina, being only nineteen years and four months old, fared better, but she, too, was tired.

Brigita said, “I’m too pooped to cook.”

Dinko said, “I’m too tired to eat at the moment. Maybe after a shower I’ll revive.”

“I can cook!” Lita volunteered. “Please?”

“It’s okay with me, dear,” Brigita said.

Dinko said, “What a day. I actually worked at cleaning the house, and my mother says she doesn’t wanna cook a meal. Something strange is happening around here. I think we’re bewitched.” And he looked at Lita Medina in such a way that his mother thought he might be right.

“I’m gonna take a very long bath,” Brigita said.

While she was soaking in the tub, Brigita Babich thought of a local Croatian girl who’d joined the LAPD several years earlier. When other Croatians would see her on the streets, they’d run right up to her and pinch her cheeks or touch her uniform and sing her praises. They were all that proud of her. Brigita used to have a fantasy that Dinko might someday marry a girl like that.

Hector Cozzo always felt a slight tug of nostalgia that embarrassed him when he drove south on the Harbor Freeway, heading “back to town.” The remote, incestuous nature of Pedro was something all the old residents forever talked about, especially the Croats and Italians. It was still a small town where the white people knew one another. They all liked to say, “Pedro is full of inbreeding, which is why we’re so weird.”

Hector understood that their working-class seaside “town” was not like any other on the California coast. The inhabitants were blue-collar right down to the soles of their sensible shoes. And though they bemoaned the changes that had brought a hundred halfway houses and sober living homes—more than anywhere else in Los Angeles—Pedro was still special to them. Even though now he knew he might see more Latinos than Anglos, still there was something that made members of the younger generation, like thirty-two-year-old Hector Cozzo, experience an occasional yearning to come home.

As he reached the freeway’s end that afternoon, under a summer sky that was clear and dry over the harbor, he saw the countless containers stacked high on Front Street, near the train tracks that boxed everyone in during peak traffic hours. There was no beauty to any of that, but it spoke to him of hardworking people who’d stayed when the fishing business had faded and the big canneries had closed.

He felt again the bittersweet pang of nostalgia, and an impulse to drive straight to his parents’ house and grovel sufficiently. He could ask them to let him move home for a few months, and let the cops deal with Markov and Kim. But by his very nature, he knew he was unable to reject the offer of so much money. When it came to big bank, he was in. All in. After he had the money, he could consider going home to lie low and endure the ear pounding he would get from his family about what a failure he was. They might sing a different tune if his pockets were full of dead presidents.

When he got to the heart of San Pedro, he stopped by a popular waterfront restaurant to use the outdoor restroom beneath the eatery. Recreational fishermen parked their cars in the lot next door, and a sign inside the restroom said, in both English and Spanish, “Please don’t clean fish in the bathroom sink.” Someone had penciled next to it, “Where should we clean them, the toilet?”