Judgment (8 page)

Lieu opened his desk drawer and pulled out a package of Sugar Babies. He popped four into his mouth and offered the open bag to Shaw.

"No, thanks."

Lieu munched on the chewy gob. "I wouldn't get too attached to your victimized attitude, Ronny. You're to blame for most of this mess."

Shaw held out his hand and Lieu poured a few Sugar Babies into his open palm.

"I won't fault you, Ronny, for coming down hard on Tomas. Anyone might have done that." Lieu popped a few more caramel treats into his mouth. "But meeting that kid in an alley and not bringing Sliran in with you was stupid. That was mistake number one. Mistake two was not bringing the kid down here to make his confession. Mistake three was not arresting the kid then and there."

Lieu snapped his fingers. "Three strikes and you're out. A cop with your experience should know better."

Shaw fell into a chair. "You're right," he said glumly. He held out his hand for more Sugar Babies, chewed on them awhile, and watched the Internal Affairs boys grill Sliran. "Well, Lieutenant, what do you see in your crystal ball?"

Lieu pondered a Sugar Baby. "I'd say you're heading into a world of hurt. I'd get yourself a lawyer."

Shaw chuckled miserably. "Anyone got Dexter's number?"

# # # # # #

The streets were empty under a full moon that colored the world, through a cloud-streaked sky, with hazy blue shadows. Wind whistled between buildings and the stillness seemed palpable, thick, and uneasy. Shadows became threatening, twitching and darting between crevices and alleys, doorways and other seams in the night.

His shadow fell on the street. His footfalls echoed amidst the gutted, blackened buildings. The lone, unscorched streetlight cast its single unnatural glow on his face as he stood at the alley's mouth.

His eyes were dark, made dull by a fury that had ebbed into a deep, intense anger. He felt almost inanimate, as soulless as the night itself. His shadow lay like a corpse in front of him, stretching into the alley.

He felt utterly alone, unattached to any person, and unable to conjure any joy from the world around him. Unmoving, he stood there struggling to understand and control the changes occurring within him. He feared he might lose any humanity he ever had. It was an agony endured in silence.

He stood. Sunlight slowly burned its way through the night, and the shadows melted away.

He was at the hot-dog stand when Saul arrived at six a.m.

Saul didn't recognize him at first. Looking at the stranger warily as he unlocked the hot-dog stand, he opened the shutters over the counter. The man sat on a stool, his face unshaven, his distant eyes watching the street awaken. Saul tied on his apron and heated up the grill. "You're Brett Macklin, aren't you?"

Macklin turned.

"I didn't recognize you at first." Saul scraped the grill with a spatula. "I've only seen you twice. You didn't look like hell then."

Saul grinned at Macklin. The pilot looked ten years older than when he had seen him at the funeral.

"Listen, Brett, sit right there and I'll fix you up some of my famous eggs." Saul cracked two eggs over the grill, then reached into the refrigerator for a handful of hash browns.

"Your starch special," Macklin said.

Saul saw a hint of brightness in Macklin's eyes. "I see JD told you about my famous breakfast platter."

"And your grease burger."

Saul laughed. "We can still be friends, can't we?"

Macklin grinned. Saul's cheerfulness warmed him, and some of his emotional chill evaporated. "My father walked a beat so he could work off the extra tonnage you put on him."

Saul pointed to the eggs with his spatula. "How you want them?"

"Over easy." Macklin unzipped his jacket and leaned on the counter. "Listen, Saul, I didn't come down here just to eat."

"Big surprise," he said, flipping over the eggs. "Hardly anyone does."

"Dad talked to you—"

"Yes, he did, Brett," Saul interrupted. "And I miss him. Every morning and every evening JD would sit right there, where you are, and just talk. We never saw him as a police officer, you know, walking a beat. He was just another street person, a shopkeeper, a friend."

"Look, Saul, did he ever talk to you about the gangs?"

"A little. Moe and me and your father couldn't believe how violent our neighborhood was getting. We were always hearing stories about kids doing awful things to each other. Why, I can remember when this was a peaceful place to li—"

"What kind of stories?"

Saul handed Macklin his plate of eggs and hash browns. "Horrible things, beatings and shootings and just horrible things, you know. Even your father was shocked. He couldn't figure it out. We'd hear all this talk, but your father just couldn't track down anything. But you know your father—that only made him more determined. He wanted to know where all these stories were coming from and why all this was going on."

Saul buttered two slices of toast and set them in from of Macklin. "The neighborhood's just deteriorating. We noticed it, JD noticed it, everyone noticed it. JD, though, he took it personally. Like it reflected on his ability as a police officer, you know? It seemed like more violence every day. You know things are going bad when vultures like Elias Simon"—Saul pointed his spatula to the Silver Tabernacle looming in the sky behind Macklin—"come down and pick on your bones."

Macklin looked over his shoulder at the towering glass monolith. "Like a vulture?"

"Sure. Comes in here with his fancy duds and con-man smile and his missions and says he's gonna bring Jesus down here." Saul frowned. "Christ'll stay at the Bonaventure. He won't come down here. Simon just came to prey on our fear. People will turn to him cause they're scared and don't know where else to go.
The schmucks.
"

Macklin wiped up the yolk on his plate with a piece of toast and took a bite. "Why do you stay, Saul?"

"Good question."

And apparently not one that would be answered. Macklin pushed his plate away. "What can you tell me about the Bounty Hunters?"

"I wouldn't invite them over for dinner. Why are you asking me all these questions? A walking encyclopedia I'm not." Saul looked at him questioningly and cleared away Macklin's plate. "Good, huh?"

"Delicious. Look, Saul, I'm just trying to understand my father's death. I want to know why he was killed."

"Senseless violence, that's all. Nowadays it happens all the time."

Moe waddled up, the
Los Angeles Times
folded under his arm, and sat on the stool beside Macklin.

"'Morning, Saul. Did ya read the paper?"

Saul had his back to the counter. "Haven't had a chance, Moe. Say hello to JD's son, Brett."

Moe set his paper on the counter and turned, offering his chubby hand to Macklin, who shook it.

"Sorry about your pop. JD and I were close friends. He talked about you, yep. He sure was proud of you."

Macklin tried to smile.

"Couldn't believe they let those punks off. Jesus. What's happening to our legal system?" Moe shook his head. "You know, pretty soon those old farts in the Supreme Court are gonna make it illegal to fight back when some guy jumps you. You'll have to roll over on your back, point to your nuts, and say 'Kick me here and please take my wallet.'"

"What do you know about the Bounty Hunters?"

"Buncha punks, what more do I need to know?"

"Where can I find 'em?"

Moe laughed. "See that street behind you? Just walk out there some night and they'll find you."

The exit signs on the Santa Monica Freeway whizzed past Brett Macklin at seventy miles per hour as he drove the Batmobile towards the patch of glowing, towering names scrawled in the night sky. Crocker Bank. Simon Ministries. Hilton. Transamerica. Jesus Saves. Wells Fargo. They shined blue, green, and bright white against the blackness.

He turned up the stereo, letting Bruce Springsteen run full throttle down "Thunder Road," and veered south away from the downtown skyline towards the softer lights of the neighborhood his father had patrolled.

Earlier that evening Macklin had tried to sleep. But no position in bed was comfortable. His body was damp with sweat and the sheets stuck to his skin. His limbs were tingling so strong, so strangely, that relaxing was a fight. He was tortured by a nameless compulsion that needed no rest. It struggled with him, racing his pulse and making his head throb. He yanked off the sheets, lay for a few minutes, and then bolted from the bed, pacing nervously around the room.

The image of the empty judge's bench and the whisper in his head prodded him again. The next thing he knew he was dressed and slicing through the night, his face reflecting the unearthly green light from the Cadillac's dashboard.

Macklin tried to lose himself in the music. It was no good. The compulsion was louder. No matter how high he cranked up the stereo, no matter how fast he drove, Macklin couldn't force back the compulsion.

The only thing that seemed to ease his tension was the image of himself holding his father's gun, pumping bullets into the gang members that had been set free. That image scared Macklin. It went against everything his father had taught him. Yet it was only when he envisioned himself killing that the painful ache in his stomach ebbed. Only then did he feel any comfort.

The image teased him now. The pain was gone, but the compulsion was as strong as ever.

Macklin followed the curving off-ramp and slid quietly onto the trash-strewn streets of the neighborhood, lowering the volume on his stereo and settling back into his seat. He felt removed from what he saw, as if seeing it on television or from the comfort of a tour bus. This was a foreign land, an alien planet, a world entirely different from the middle-class streets of West Los Angeles.

This was where old General Motors cars go to die, Macklin thought. GM heaven. Monte Carlos, Chevelles, Novas, sharp Buick Rivieras, and pretentious Pontiac Bonnevilles—here they were world-class touring cars. The trappings of ghetto status and loyalty.

Macklin cruised the streets slowly, looking at the faces, learning the terrain. People gathered near an open-all-night liquor store, warming themselves on its neon fire as if it would keep the desperation that stalked this urban wilderness at bay. The people were smileless and had tired, gentle faces.

Teenagers played video games, hung out, strutted, and hit on girls at the Burger Shop. Little placards ran along the flat roofline advertising Chinese food, fried chicken, hickory burgers, and tacos.

The neighborhood people all seemed to be performing to Macklin, acting rough and hard because some script somewhere told them to, because men like Macklin
expected
them to.

Macklin scrutinized the faces.

Maybe he was wrong. They seemed like frightened, angry people. Just like him. Not animals, not creatures he had to punish. Could Shaw have pushed Tomas Cruz too hard? Was the confession what Dexter claimed it was—a lie, the desperate act of a person afraid for his life?

Then Macklin remembered
them
. Primo, Carrera, Teobaldo Villanueva. The violence he saw in their eyes. They didn't bother to hide it. They flaunted it, reveled in it, too.

But did they kill Dad?

Macklin twisted the wheel, the car screeching around the corner in front of Sho-More Adult Films and speeding away from the neon promise of "BIG THRILLS, HARD ACTION, TITILATING FUN."

He passed Saul's hot-dog stand, following the path his father walked before his death. Bars covered all the storefront windows and doors. It was as if the neighborhood were a prison that kept its captives locked on the streets.

Macklin steered clear of the charred section of the block, turned the corner, and headed north towards downtown LA.

There, like a gleaming diamond in a shitheap, was a crisp and clean McDonald's restaurant, resplendent in its bright red brick and golden arches. Unscratched and untarnished, it looked shockingly out of place. The decay that had fed on the neighborhood dared not touch the home of the Egg McMuffin. It was as if the McDonald's were a McHoly shrine on McSacred ground, supernaturally protected from the neighborhood's destructive elements.

It gave Macklin the creeps.

A foot away from the McDonald's parking lot, the supernatural forces ebbed to nothing and entropy began.

The traffic light turned red at the next intersection and Macklin stopped beside a dental clinic that used to be a gas station. The pump islands, minus the pumps, were still there, and the sign that had once read "TEXACO" now lit Dr. Kelly Selvidge's name up in lights.

Dr. Selvidge's neighbor was the green stucco of Christ's Community Church. Huge letters atop the building proclaimed, "GOD BLESS OUR COMMUNITY."

He'd better, sport,
Macklin thought,
because nobody else will.

The light turned green and the Batmobile surged into the intersection. Macklin glanced up at a lighted billboard that announced to the neighborhood that "AMERICA IS GOING TO EUROPE ON PAN AM."

And you're not, the billboard seemed to tease. Your sorry ass is stuck here for good.

Macklin sympathized with the people who had to look at that billboard, that sadistic taunt, every day. The hate Macklin had felt wasn't burning as strongly now. The neighborhood had had a cooling effect on him. The streets didn't radiate violence, as he had expected, as much as despair. He found it hard to resent the place or its people.

But his father had died there in a sick, gruesome way. Somewhere on these hopeless streets walked the bastards that had struck the match.

Macklin cruised down another street, looking for them.

The moment Teobaldo Villanueva came into the pool hall, people began to worry. Not because he was tall. Not because he was bald. Not because he was rumored to bend crowbars with his teeth. And certainly not because he was Chicano.

Those qualities were nothing to fret about. Everyone in the room
respected
those. The clientele in Crazy Al's pool hall held Baldo in high regard, learning long ago to smile when Baldo was smiling and frown when Baldo was frowning. They knew how to handle it when Baldo was happy or unhappy—it was just a question of how best to avoid him without pissing him off.