Shetani's Sister (19 page)

In the next second, Rivera recognized Shetani from the mug shots and long rap sheet of Albert Spires sent to Rucker from his New York detective acquaintance, at the beginning of the Shetani stable's invasion of Hollywood. Every squad member had been given a print.

Rivera dropped back to tail the Lincoln while he decided what action to take to apprehend Albert Spires, the documented psychotic. He reported the situation, including the Lincoln's license-plate number, to Hollywood Station. He resumed tailing.

Within minutes, Lieutenant Bleeson ordered an alert to helicopters and all units in the field to search for the Lincoln.

Shetani peeped through the rear window and saw Rivera in the Datsun behind him. He said in a deadly voice, “There's a Datsun following us. Lose it!”

Rucker stomped the gas pedal. Rivera was caught in the crunch of traffic at a stoplight several blocks away.

Shetani said, “Turn right off Western, and double back for the Hollywood Hills.”

As Rucker turned the corner, a rare late-summer rainstorm started. A police helicopter, scarcely visible in the heavy downpour, hovered in the sky above the Lincoln.

Rucker shut off his radio when he heard the first sentence of the alert. Immediately Shetani growled, “I want to hear some more of that pig rap. Turn it on!”

Rucker switched it on to the voice of the dispatcher, giving the Lincoln's description and license-plate number. Shetani slugged the barrel of the gun against the side of Rucker's face. “Pull into that market lot,” Shetani shouted. “We're gonna get new wheels.”

Rucker pulled to a stop near the grocery's front entrance. Shetani tapped the gun against the top of Rucker's head. “Go all the way to the far end of this lot.”

Rucker did as ordered. Shetani spotted an elderly black woman loading groceries from a cart into an old Buick sedan. He tapped the gun barrel against Rucker's head. “Gimme your gun.”

Rucker took it from his holster and passed it back over his head. Shetani stuck it in his waistband. “I'm getting out first. Then you're getting out. Get cute and your ass is dead.”

Rucker tensed and waited until he heard the rear door open and saw Shetani step out to the pavement from the corner of his eye. He scooted across the seat toward the passenger front door at the instant when Shetani flung open the driver's door.

Rucker bent forward as he exited the car and slammed the door behind him. He heard bullets whiz above his head and ping against the inner side of the door.

Shetani raced around the front of the Lincoln in hot pursuit. He stopped and leveled his gun at Rucker's back. Rucker sprinted for cover behind a semi trailer. Shetani fired three rapid shots. He saw Rucker fall heavily on his face. He looked about. The old black woman was loading the last of her groceries. He walked to within thirty feet of Rucker's prostrate form. The back of Rucker's head was bloody, and a pool of blood was forming beneath it.

Shetani, certain that Rucker was dead, turned and sprinted toward the old Buick. The old woman was just getting behind the wheel. Shetani opened the passenger door and got in beside the utterly frightened woman. Her stricken eyes locked on his gun.

“Easy, Grandma, I won't hurt you. Just do what I say and everything is gonna be all right,” he said gently.

Raindrops splattered on the windshield. “Hit the freeway, Grandma,” Shetani said softly. The old woman pulled the Buick away.

A police helicopter that had hovered above the market lot since Rucker drove into the lot followed the Buick.

Shetani said gently, “Now drive.” The woman's lips moved in rapid, silent prayer as she moved the Buick toward an exit.

“Where do you live, lady?”

She cast a fearful glance at him. “I ain't got no money there. I ain't got nothin',” she babbled.

Shetani intoned, “Who are you? Where do you live, and who lives with you?”

Tears sprang from her large, dark eyes. “Mister, I'm a widow woman. Jus' a poor cleaning woman for rich white folks. I'm Maggie Jones, and I live in South Central, on Forty-sixth and Western. I ain't got nothin'. Please, lemme go, mister!”

He peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills from a wad. Her eyes widened at the flash of big green.

“Go home, Grandma. This is yours in advance, to rent a place to stay in your house for a couple of days. I want you to keep me company and get some rest,” he said as he shoved the bills into her purse on the seat.

She drove toward a nearby freeway entrance. Above them, the police helicopter hovered as the pilot vainly tried to read the rear license plate, the only one on the Buick, through the fog of torrential rain. He had already radioed in the details of the shooting and a general description of the suspect, and the Buick that he had commandeered.

Shetani heard the distant yowling sirens of three police cars as Maggie turned into the freeway's fast traffic. Shortly, Maggie left the freeway at the Vernon Avenue turnoff.

The pilot continued surveillance until that point. The instability of the copter under the stress of the heavy downpour forced him to turn back to the heliport. His last radio fix on the Buick brought police cars to the Vernon Avenue turnoff, minutes too late. The units started a search of the ghetto for the Buick and Shetani.

Maggie drove the Buick into a carport at the back of her heavily barred, modest stucco home on Forty-sixth Street, in the heart of black-ghetto gang turf.

Maggie led Shetani through the barred back door into an immaculate kitchen. “Have a seat,” she said as she collapsed onto a chair.

He smiled and sat down across the table. He placed his gun on the tabletop. “Maggie, soon as you rest a little, I want to see the whole house. Now, tell me, how many relatives and friends visit you regularly?”

She patted the bun of silver hair on the nape of her neck. “All of my kin is dead 'cept my grown twin boys. They live in Arizona. They only visit when Christmas rolls round…My church friends is old, and they call, but I seldom see them 'cept at church.” She sighed and continued: “I useta have lotsa friends on this street. But dope and the gangsters done run all the decent peoples away 'cept me, 'cause I'm too poor to move. Please, mister, put that gun away, 'cause I'm gonna do what you say. Come on, and I'll show you round,” she said as she grunted her obese frame to her feet.

He stuck the automatic in his waistband, next to Rucker's gun. He followed her through the neat two-bedroom house, furnished with ancient furniture. They paused in front of the open door of the second bedroom, which fronted the street.

“Maggie, I'll take this one,” he said as he entered the twin-bed-furnished room and checked out the closet.

She wrung her work-coarsened hands. “I don't mean no harm, but this has been my bedroom for forty years. I'm afraid you gonna have to…”

The clap of his huge hands startled her into silence like a pistol shot.

“Easy, Maggie. We're both sleeping in here. Believe me, I'm as far from a rapist as anybody can be.”

They went to sit on a black horsehair sofa. He took her hand in his and locked his paralyzing orbs on her face. “Maggie, if you slip away from me, I'll burn your house down and leave. Understand?”

She nodded, with the back of her hand against her mouth. She got up and moved toward a TV. He said harshly, “No TV, Granny!”

She turned and stared pitiful eyes at him. “Please, TV is one of my main enjoyments in life, 'cept church.”

He nodded her back to turn on the set. A special newscast blared on, with interior Cedars-Sinai hospital in the background. The newsman's voice shook with emotion.

“The following photograph of suspect Albert Spires, in the shooting of Sergeant Detective Russell Rucker of Hollywood, will be shown shortly on-screen. Spires is also a suspect in the murder of four persons at his home in the Hollywood Hills. Commander Bleeson of Hollywood Division warns citizens, especially those in South Central L.A., not to approach or try to apprehend this man if sighted, but to call the police. Albert Spires is armed and considered extremely dangerous. A detailed account of this manhunt and Detective Rucker's condition will be presented on the four o'clock newscast.”

Shetani's mug shot appeared on-screen for a long moment before a game show resumed. Maggie stood, trembling beside the TV, before she collapsed to her knees. She prayed frantically under her breath.

He got up and helped her to her feet. He led her back to sit on the sofa beside him. She broke down in tears and blubbered, “You done kilt all those peoples. Please, go.”

He vised her face between his palms, with his flaming eyes almost touching her face. He whispered fiercely, “Calm down, now, and listen to the truth…That cop came to my house to kill me about sweethearting around with his wife. I hid, and when my friends tried to take his gun, he killed them. He trailed me to that market lot and tried to shoot me. I took his gun away and shot him. Can you believe a nigger over those rotten white folks, Miss Maggie?”

She nodded. He released her face and kissed her forehead.

At twilight, Rucker awoke from sedation at Cedars. He gazed up at his tall, bearded physician, standing beside the bed. The doctor's majestic frame and silvery beard and mane were illuminated by fluorescent ceiling light that created a radiant aura, a supernatural ambience, around the white-clad figure.

Rucker thought, “I've died, and I'm face to face with God. I'm sure glad he knows I've always believed he existed in some form.”

God spoke to him in a booming baritone as he took his pulse: “Mr. Rucker, I'm Dr. Goldstein. How do you feel, besides lucky?”

Rucker was mute as his eyes focused sharply to realize that he was alive and there was no interview with God. “A little woozy, doc,” Rucker murmured.

The doctor placed a stethoscope on his chest and listened. “You lost an alarming amount of blood, which transfusions have replaced. The bullet that grazed the back of your skull would have been fatal if its trajectory variance had been a quarter of an inch. Several ruptured blood vessels at the juncture of head and neck were the cause of your loss of blood…Sergeant, you should be back on the street in several days.” The doctor turned and left the room.

Rucker's fingers probed the large bandage around the top of his head and the several bandages on his face that covered the lacerations from the fall on the parking-lot concrete.

Lieutenant Bleeson stepped into the room. “Hi, you lucky sonuvagun. Your doctor just gave me the good news,” he said as he sat down in a chair at bedside.

“Did you get that black sonuvabitch?” Rucker asked with high emotion.

Bleeson leaned over and patted Rucker's shoulder. “Russell, it's not good for you to overreact in this matter. You…”

Rucker seized his hand and squeezed it. “Goddamn it, Lieutenant, answer the question.”

Bleeson pulled his hand away. “Russell, Albert Spires is bottled up in South Central. He hasn't a prayer to escape. He killed his henchmen twins, his snow-blonde stable straw boss, and a thieving hooker called Pee Wee Smith before he shot you. A New York hooker named Bianca was arrested for the murder of a john in Wisconsin. The basis for arrest was her fingerprints lifted in the murder apartment. She fingered Pee Wee as the trigger person. Every cop, sheriff's deputy, and CHP officer in California is out to get this guy, so be cool and—”

Rucker's face contorted as he lunged upright toward Bleeson to cut him off. “Cool my ass, Lieutenant? That lowlife cocksucker abused me to the max before he tried to kill me. He took something from me. He raped me, Lieutenant! I'm gonna find him personally and bring him in or kill him, to get back what he took from me.”

Bleeson stood. “Please, Russell, calm down and mend…You just filed your retirement papers the other day. Trust us to get the guy. I'll be back. In the meantime, I'll give you a jingle when we bag him.”

Bleeson left the room. Rucker immediately used his bedside phone to call the cop that headed CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums). The anti-gang unit surveilled gang members and kept records of their criminal careers and whereabouts. His hand trembled with excitement as he replaced the receiver.

Idus “Tank” Settles was on the street, the unchallenged leader of the Black Elite Gang, the largest, most feared and powerful street gang in Los Angeles.

Rucker dialed Information to get Tank's mother's home phone number. He hung up when Mamie said, “Settles residence.” He had rescued then preteener Tank from a clubbing or worse at the hands of a trio of older gangsters. He wasn't sure that Tank's sense of gratitude could be counted upon after seven years. But he was certain that Mamie Settles, if needed, would use any influence she had over Tank to get his cooperation in the search for Spires.

Rucker thought that the wire services would pick up the story of the shooting and the mass murders in the Hollywood Hills. He called Opal, to assure her that he was alive and clear of head. At 3:30 a.m., he dressed in trousers and shoes and hospital pajama top. His bloodstained shirt and coat had been cut off and trashed.

His nurse and the hospital personnel tried in vain to convince him not to leave. He caught a cab and went home to change clothes, and get a gun and extra bullets.

He dressed in a dark-blue suit, and fainted in the upstairs hallway as he walked toward the stairway. He came to minutes later and feebly made his way to the kitchen. He poured a tall glass of orange juice and collapsed in a welter of sweat onto the bench of the breakfast nook.

Finally, he called the police impound lot to find out that his Lincoln was releasable. He called a cab and picked up his car. He drove toward South Central L.A. He had decided to get certain info on gang leader Tank that very probably wasn't known by CRASH. Chauncy “One Pocket” Stiles was the one snitch that he knew from his long stint in 77th Division who could supply the info he needed. That is, if Stiles was still alive or hadn't relocated from his combination poolroom and second-story after-hours gin mill in the heart of Tank's domain.