Hollywood Hills (10 page)

So there was no dearth of violence and other serial crimes for the dozen overworked detectives at Hollywood Station to deal with, and the detectives at the Major Assault Crimes table got their share of domestic violence cases in that first year of the recession. The MAC detectives who responded late on a blistering hot afternoon to an unusual domestic violence call from a woman in an apartment building in Little Armenia were both cops with mor
e t
han twenty years on the Job. Gina Villegas, a forty-three-year-old energetic Mexican American, and Carl Cheng, a forty-two-yearold laconic Taiwanese American, were both children of immigrants who got to use their language skills frequently in the polyglot community that was Hollywood.

They hadn't needed their foreign-language skills when they got ordered to Little Armenia. They were responding to a telephonic plea made to their D3 supervisor by a terrified woman who said that she had been stalked and threatened by an ex-lover who was father to the baby she had given birth to only five weeks prior. Thelma Barker, their detective supervisor, was a bootstraps-up black veteran with thirty-one years on the Job. She was born and raised in Compton and had been a victim of domestic violence herself during a brief marriage at the age of nineteen.

The old three-story building in Little Armenia, consisting of twenty-eight rental units, was a rectangular block of gray stucco, and was possibly the most protected apartment building in that part of east Hollywood. Because of episodes of tagging by street gangs in the area, the owner had taken the extraordinary step of hiring local pensioners as watchmen. The geezers took turns sitting in a tiny office off the lobby from 9 P
. M
. to 6 A
. M
. seven days a week, when vandalism was a threat. There were no fire escapes or any exterior balconies that could be easily accessed.

The detectives rang the manager and were buzzed inside by a retired plumber who also did handyman jobs in the building. When he learned who the detectives were looking for, he said, "Confidentially, I don't like it when the owner of this property gets so charitable. The girl in three-ten is his niece, or so he claims. She's behind two months in the rent and still he lets her stay. Don't tell her I told you, but she leaves her two babies alone sometimes. I've felt like calling you when she does it, but she's the boss's special tenant, if you know what I mean, and I don't wanna lose this job."

Gina Villegas thanked him, and when they got to the one-bedroo
m a
partment on the third floor, a dangerously thin woman met them at the door. She was a twenty-five-year-old strawberry blonde with frightened, darting eyes, trembling hands, and suspiciously stained teeth.

Carl Cheng's glance toward his partner said, Tweaker.

Before either cop could say anything to her, the woman said
,
"I'm the one who called your office. My name's Cindy Kroll. M
y e
x-boyfriend is threatening me. I think he wants to kill me."

"And why would you think that?" Gina Villegas asked while
Carl Cheng glanced around the little apartment.

There were two chairs at the small Formica table in the kitchen. And in the living room, if you could call it that, was a sofa, a shabby overstuffed chair, an infant's crib, and a playpen, all crowded together around a big-screen Sony TV.

Carl Cheng smirked subtly in his partner's direction as if to say, No matter how crappy they live, they always have a better TV than I do.

Cindy Kroll said, "Sorry there's no place to sit down." She pointed to a thirteen-month-old in the playpen. Then she said, "My five-week-old baby boy's asleep in my bedroom. We don't have much room here."

Gina Villegas said, "A thirteen-month-old and a five-week-old? You're not wasting time starting a family, are you?"

"My baby boy was an accident, and that's what's causing the problem," Cindy Kroll said. "His father wants me dead for demanding child support."

"Are you married to him?" the detective asked.

"No," she said. "After my first baby was born, my husband, Ralphie, took off and left us. I had a tough time and could only make a few bucks cleaning houses. I had a job cleaning the apartment of Louis Dryden every week for four months. He lives up on Franklin Avenue and has a pretty good job at a real-estate company in Santa Monica, selling vacation rentals. He's maybe te
n y
ears older than me, and, well, we started getting intimate while I was working for him and pretty soon I got pregnant."

"Pregnant by him?" Gina Villegas said.

"Of course by him." Cindy Kroll's darting eyes flashed. "I'm no slut."

"No, I didn't mean that you were. But you also have a husband, right?"

"He's outta my life. I got pregnant by Louis and nobody else." "Go on," Gina Villegas said.

"He gave me some cash to get an abortion but I didn't do it. I decided to have the baby and hire a lawyer. For the past couple of months my lawyer's been calling him, but Louis says the baby isn't his. He says he's engaged to a terrific woman now and I'm ruining his life with my lies."

"How about a paternity test?" Gina Villegas said. "That should settle the matter."

"That's what my lawyer's working on now. We're gonna take him to court."

Carl Cheng spoke for the first time and said, "Why're we here, ma'am?"

"He stalked me today," Cindy Kroll said. "He caught me at the Seven-Eleven store I always go to and told me this is my last chance. He said he'd give me five thousand dollars to leave him alone and quit saying the baby's his."

"And what'd you say?" Carl Cheng asked.

"I told him to talk to my lawyer."

"And when you were at the store, where were your babies?" Gina Villegas asked.

After a long pause, Cindy Kroll said, "I was only gone for a few minutes."

"You can't leave babies alone like that. It's child endangering and it's against the law," Gina Villegas said.

Cindy Kroll said, "I asked the woman in the next apartment t
o l
ook in on them every few minutes. Don't you wanna hear what I got to say? This man threatened me!"

This time Gina Villegas glanced at her partner. A woman next door? Sure.

"Of course we want to hear," Carl Cheng said. "What did he say exactly?"

Cindy Kroll now addressed all answers to the male detective and said, "He told me his entire life and career were on the line. He said his fiancee was not like me. When I asked him what he meant, he goes, 'She's a lady, not a whore like you.' And then he threatened me."

"Use his exact words if you can remember," Carl Cheng said.

"Okay, he said to me, 'Whatever happens is on your head, not mine. You're forcing me to do whatever I gotta do to stop your blackmail from wrecking my whole life.' That's exactly what he said."

Carl Cheng said, "Did you ask him what he meant by that?"

"I knew what he meant," Cindy Kroll said. "I'm not stupid!"

Gina Villegas said, "What you know or think you know about the implication of his words will not satisfy the District Attorney's Office. Did he say more than that? Anything specific by way of a violent threat?"

Cindy Kroll directed her answer to Carl Cheng and said, "Then he goes, 'I'll make it ten thousand dollars but no more. Take the extortion money and get outta my life.' That's exactly what he said."

"What did you say?" Gina Villegas asked.

Cindy Kroll looked at her this time and said, "The same thing. That he should talk to my lawyer."

"It doesn't constitute a threat of violence," Carl Cheng said. "Look, Detective," she said to him, "I had sex with that ma
n l
otsa times. All I want is a reasonable amount of child support t
o r
aise his baby boy." Then she paused and said, "Our baby boy."

"There're limits to what we can do," Gina Villegas said.

"You gotta do something now!" Cindy Kroll said. "The man's been smoking a lotta crystal meth. Way more since our troubles started, and it makes him totally paranoid. He had an insane look in his eyes today when he threatened me. Do you know what it's like to get all paranoid from smoking crystal ?"

Carl Cheng's look said, No, but I'll bet you do.

"Do you know if he has a police record ?" Gina Villegas asked. "Not that I know of."

"Have you done crystal meth with him?" Gina Villegas asked.

"Oh, fuck!" Cindy Kroll said, and stifled a sob. "You don't care if he kills me! I need protection. Tonight is when he likes to go out and score enough crystal for the weekend. I'm in danger tonight."

Gina Villegas sat down at the kitchen table, pushed some baby debris aside, and opened her notebook and said, "Okay, give us his address and phone number. We'll try to have a talk with him."

"What if he's not home?" Cindy Kroll said. "I need protection at least for tonight."

"There are domestic violence shelters," Gina Villegas said. "And restraining orders. Have you talked to your lawyer about all that?"

"I don't wanna go to a fucking shelter!" Cindy Kroll said. "I want police protection here in my home."

Carl Cheng said, "We can't camp out here based on what you've told us. But we'll ask the radio car in this area to drive by tonight and keep an eye on the place. I gotta tell you, though, this building's like a fortress. I noticed that the rear fire door is steel-reinforced with no handle on the outside. And you have a watchman in the lobby, right? Does Louis Dryden have a key, either to the main door or to your apartment?"

"No," she admitted. "He only came in here a few times after he drove me home."

"Well, there you go," Carl Cheng said. "You're safe here. But just to put your mind at rest, a black-and-white will do drive-bys tonight. Okay?"

After returning to the station, the MAC team tried to reach Louis Dryden by phone but got no answer, and no answering machine picked up. They ran a record check using the description supplied to them by Cindy Kroll but came back with nothing that fit Louis Dryden on Franklin Avenue. They were already into overtime by then and so were five other detectives, busy in their tiny cubicles, making phone calls and working computers.

The MAC team told D3 Thelma Barker about the vague implied threat that Louis Dryden had allegedly made. They said that Cindy Kroll's boyfriend was a tweaker and they were sure she was, too.

"The mother of the year, she ain't," Carl Cheng finally told his D3. "Our read is that she gave birth to a baby she doesn't want just to trap the guy into marriage or blackmail him into a nice cash settlement, or maybe both."

"Tell you what," their D3 said. "I know it's getting late and you'd like to get started on your weekend, but just to be on the safe side, let's ask a patrol unit to drop one of your business cards with a phone-me message on Louis Dryden's doorstep. That'll put the fear of God in him if he's thinking of doing something stupid." She looked at her watch and said, "The midwatch is about finished with roll call. Why don't you tell the sergeant what this is all about and also ask that a radio car drive by the place a few times tonight for a quick look-see. You never know with tweakers when they're amped up."

"If she's a tweaker, too, maybe she's the one that's paranoid," Carl Cheng said. "That's what tweakers do, get all paranoid."

"It'll make me feel better if you do it my way," his D3 said with a look that ended the discussion.

"Okay, boss," Carl Cheng said with a sigh of fatigue. "Anything you say."

Chapter
Seven.

THE NEW WATCH commander, Lieutenant O'Reilly, conducted roll call that afternoon for Watch 5, the midwatch. He was a thirtyyear-old lieutenant who so far the troops didn't much like. He'd tested well on promotion exams and was recently appointed to his rank with only nine years on the Department and sent to Hollywood Division for his probation. He gave them a condescending lecture that was so boring it couldn't have been enlivened with hand puppets. It was all about treating the citizens of Hollywood with the utmost respect, even those who were as crazy as rabid squirrels. And in Hollywood that included a lot of folks.

On the wall behind the long tables where his captive audience sat were framed movie posters, including ones for Sunset Boulevard and L
. A
. Confidential, an indication that the officers of Hollywood Station were very aware of their unique geography. Finally, the lieutenant ran out of things to lecture them about and said, "Let's go to work." The cops gathered their gear, but before leaving the room, each of them touched for luck the framed photo of their late sergeant whom they'd called the Oracle. They had loved their old supervisor, and he had thought of them as his children.

The framed photo, which was affixed to the wall beside the doorway, bore a brass plate that said: