The Trials of Nikki Hill (47 page)

He paused. Getting ready to end their little chat?

“So you’re carrying on the Tom Gleason tradition,” she said.

“What tradition is that?” he asked suspiciously.

“He picked you as his protégé,” she said. “You’ve picked Rupert as yours.”

“He’s a great kid, isn’t he?” Walden said proudly. “You should have seen him just three years ago. A gutter rat with delusions of grandeur. Not much smarter than his brother. Jacking cars and calling himself Mr. Caviar. Why? Because he thought it sounded classy. He’s got a sharp mind and he learns fast. I was telling him about James Doyle’s tricks helping Dyana Cooper’s defense, and Rupert said, ‘Don’t worry about it; I’ll handle Doyle.’ Just like that.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it was wearing the sappy proud grin of an ersatz father. She decided to wipe it away. “You shouldn’t have let him try to take on Doyle,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Goodman and Morales busted him at Doyle’s place. He was carrying the machete he used on Arthur Lydon. He’s behind bars.”

“Damn, that’s why I couldn’t reach him,” Walden said. “When was he arrested?”

“Just before we left. He’s the one told the detectives all about Lee-O.”

“No. Not Rupert. He knows enough to keep quiet, and I’ll figure out a way to free him. That’s the beauty of my job. He’ll be getting out. Dyana Cooper will be going in.”

He fell silent. Eager to keep him talking, Nikki asked, “What happened twenty years ago?”

“What?”

“You said you’d kept your temper under control for more than twenty years.”

“Oh, yes. God, Tom was a generous man. I damn near destroyed his whole operation, and still he kept his faith in me.”

“What happened?”

“Temper again. I was young. Black was beautiful. A brother had the gall to bring his tamale pie to live in the hood. I warned him. He got pushy and I got pissed off. I talked the others into a little neighborhood ethnic cleansing. It was an idiotic thing to do, a thing you do when you’re a kid and full of fire. The police were all over me. That’s what sent me out here to my aunt and uncle—to escape their clutches. So I guess, in the long run, it was the right thing to do after all.”

She’d got her good leg under her body and was in a crouching position. Just a few inches more.

Walden stood up.

“I hear someone coming. My cleanup squad has arrived, earlier than I’d expected.” He moved to the edge of the grave. “I’m glad we had this time to ourselves, Nikki”—he raised his gun and pointed it down at her—“before we had to say good-bye.”

E
IGHTY-SEVEN

G
oodman awoke tasting dirt, with a fire in the lower part of his back. When he tried to move the fire grew hotter.

He’d been shot.

The stories were correct. You don’t hear the shot that kills you, and he’d heard this one. Felt it too, as it knocked him to the ground.

The shooter had approached him cautiously. Had taken the useless gun from his fingertips, had prodded him with the toe of his shoe.

Goodman had remained still as death, and the man, Will-ins he presumed, had wandered off in the fog to do more damage.

He and the shooter must have heard Carlos approaching at the same instant. He’d opened his mouth to shout a warning just as two shots rang out. He’d kept silent, praying that the next sound he’d hear would be his partner’s gruff voice calling his name.

He’d heard nothing, so he’d lowered his head to the earth and let the combination of shock and pain do their thing to his body.

“Hey, ’migo.”

It was Carlos, but it wasn’t. The words sounded strangled, weak, high-pitched.

Goodman moved his head in their direction.

Carlos was kneeling beside him. His left arm was hanging uselessly, his white shirt stained red from neck to waist on the left side. “You ’live, ’migo?”

“Barely.”

“You see ’im? See the fucker?”

“Willins?”

“Not Willins. Walden.” Carlos said. “Joe Walden. The other J.W.”

Goodman closed his eyes. “Take me now, Lord, I’m ready.”

“Can you move?”

Goodman tried to get his feet under him and was chilled by the realization that he had no feeling at all in the lower part of his body. He fought the fear long enough to reply, “No. I don’t think I can.”

“Tha’s okay. You gonna make it, man,” Carlos said. He staggered to his feet.

“Hold on, partner. Take it easy.”

“No time. Caught me high in the chest. Hit a vein or somethin’. Losin’ lots o’ blood. Gotta go now ’fore it all runs out.”

Goodman watched him moving into the fog, looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

He doubted he’d ever see him again. Certainly not in this world.

E
IGHTY-EIGHT

W
alden aimed the pistol at Nikki at point-blank range. Even as she lifted the ax she knew it was a hopeless gesture. Still, as long as there was a second of life left...

A figure appeared, smashing into Walden just as his gun discharged.

Nikki threw herself to the floor of the grave, eyes shut tight, ears ringing from the sound. When she realized she hadn’t felt the impact of the bullet, just the agonizing pain from her ankle, she opened her eyes. Walden was tottering on the lip of the grave, trying to free his gun hand from the grip of Carlos Morales.

Then both men were tumbling into the grave with her. Fueled by a combination of adrenaline, anger, and self-preservation, she pushed clear of their grunting and flailing bodies.

Walden was under the detective, pushing at him with both hands. He’d dropped his gun in the fall. Morales was screaming Spanish curses. He was covered in blood, straddling the D.A., his good hand grabbing the big man’s throat, squeezing, pressing. Walden suddenly bucked and twisted, throwing the weakened detective against the side of the grave, where he cried out in pain and sank to the ground.

Walden bent over and Nikki saw him find his gun. As he pointed it at Morales’s head, she grabbed the ax with both hands and swung it forcefully and unerringly into Joe Walden’s broad back. With an animal roar, he fell across Morales’s body, writhing, his hands trying to reach behind him. As she watched, his wiggling slowly quieted. A gurgling noise sounded in his throat and the life went out of him.

Morales looked up at her. “We got the fucker, didn’t we?”

“We sure did, Carlos,” she said. “We put him in a grave where he belongs.”

Morales’s face registered a satisfied grin. Then he closed his eyes.

E
IGHTY-NINE

N
ikki sat in the caretaker’s office, phone to her ear, growing more and more furious with each unanswered ring. Finally, a sleepy voice said, “Police station.”

“You awake, Chief Jefferson?”

“Awake? Sure I’m awake. Who’s this?”

“Deputy D.A. Nikki Hill. I was in your office a couple hours ago.”

“Sure, I re—”

“Listen up. There’s not much time. I’m out at Eternal Light with a bunch of dead men and maybe one still alive.”

“Hold on, I—”

“Just listen,” she said. “You’ve got to do two things. First, get as many lawmen as you can out here. Highway patrol, sheriffs, whatever. There’s at least one carload of L.A. gangstas who’ll be showing up any minute and they’ll be armed and dangerous. You also have to get some kind of doctor or paramedic or whatever you can find out here. You reading me, chief?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Damn it, I’ve had to climb over two dead men to get out of a grave, then walk across a cemetery on a broken ankle just to make this phone call. So don’t give me any ‘yeah, but.’ Just do it. Please.”

“I hear you,” he said, and she broke the connection.

Chief Jefferson did his job.

By the time two gang Chevys approached Carver, he had assembled an impressive collection of highway patrolmen and other lawmen from the nearby towns of Barstow, Midway, Harvard, and Baker. Roadblocks, a first for Carver, were in position.

There was no confrontation to speak of. Shots were fired. One by a gangsta in the second car, the rest by the lawmen, blowing out the vehicles’ tires and radiators.

An astonishing collection of guns and knives were tossed from the windows of the two Chevys. Then their occupants emerged, one at a time, hands over heads, to lie down on the macadam to await a pat-down from the police.

Nikki heard about this the next morning from Chief Jefferson, who insisted she call him Parnell, as all of his friends did. They were in her room at Barstow General, the hospital where the ambulances had taken her and the detectives. “There are about fifty newspaper and TV people outside wanting to talk to you,” he said.

“You can give ’em the story,” she said.

“I’d be happy to,” he said, “but I don’t know it.”

“Then they’ll just have to make it up the way they always do,” she said.

She was ready to leave. Her badly sprained but not broken ankle had been x-rayed and taped. All that remained was for someone to drive her back to Los Angeles. That someone, Virgil, was on the way.

The situation with Goodman and Morales was considerably more dire. Both detectives were in the hospital’s intensive care section awaiting surgery. The bullet in Goodman’s back was pressed against the spine and the X rays offered no clue as to how much damage it had done. The doctors had temporarily stanched the bleeding in Morales’s chest and were replenishing his blood supply, but the general outlook was gloomy. An operation was necessary, but he was too weak to undergo it. Surgeons used by the LAPD were flying in from Los Angeles to make their own recommendations.

Virgil arrived just after ten A.M. to find her sitting in a wheelchair reading the morning paper.

“Hiya, Red.”

She tossed the paper aside and looked at him joyfully, spreading her arms wide.

He dropped to one knee and enfolded her, pulling her, chair and all, toward him.

“Oh, baby, it’s good to see you,” he said.

“Help me out of this thing.”

He reached under her arms and pulled her to her feet, holding her awkwardly. “I ain’t gonna break,” she told him. “Kiss me, damn it.”

He obeyed with such exuberance that the wheelchair was thrown back against a wall.

Neither of them noticed.

“Now that’s medicine,” she said.

“I didn’t make the trip by myself,” he said.

He carried her to a window overlooking the parking lot.

She saw Bird’s huge head poking out of the window of Virgil’s sedan.

“They stopped me from bringing him in,” he said. “No animals.”

“If that’s how they feel, let’s leave,” she said.

Before they did, they stopped by Intensive Care, where they were allowed to look through the glass at the two detectives, resting side by side under the apparatus. From where she stood, Nikki couldn’t tell which was which.

N
INETY

T
he bullet was successfully removed from Ed Goodman’s spine less than twenty-four hours after it was put there by the man they’d known as Joe Walden. The prognosis was that he would eventually regain the use of his legs, assuming that he adhered to an intense physical therapy program. When Nikki heard that Detective Gwen Harriman had resigned from the department to care for him she wondered why a resignation had been necessary, but marked it off as one of the inexplicable decisions people make when they are in love.

To the surprise of all the medical experts, Carlos Morales survived two operations, though he lost one of his lungs and a good deal of his attitude. Nearly two months after the shooting, Nikki visited him at his home and found him sitting in a wheelchair, thin and frail. His hair and mustache had turned gray and he seemed to have aged twenty years.

He grinned at what he read on her face. “Hey, I thought you were tougher than that,” he said. “It’s okay. Carlos is still here, under this old man.”

“I came to thank you for saving my life,” she told him.

“You saved mine, too,” he said. “But I owe you more than just my life. Because of you, the
maricón
who called himself Lee-O is finally and truly dead.”

She didn’t understand why that would be worth more than his life, but she knew better than to ask. “I owe you a coat,” she said. “I think yours got left behind at the hospital.”

“Hey, quiet about that,” he said. “Estella’d go nuts if she heard I gave my coat away to a beautiful woman.”

She walked to the chair, bent down, and kissed him on the cheek.

He looked up at her. “You know, Nikki, a while back I tole you Virgil Sykes wasn’t so nice. That was jus’ bullshit. I mean, the guy was a player, but I unnerstan’ he’s settlin’ down.”

She smiled. “Yes. I think he is.”

“He’s one lucky
hombre.
”

“Estella’s doing pretty well in the luck department, herself,” she said.

EPILOGUE

W
ithin six months, interest began to wane in
The Mad-die Gray Murders
and
The Joseph Walden Deception,
to quote the titles of best-selling instant book accounts of the events (both woefully inaccurate). Jamal Deschamps’s suit against the county was settled quietly for an undisclosed sum. (Nikki discovered it to be two hundred thousand dollars.) The untelevised trial and eventual conviction of Rupert Williams and five other Crazy Eights, one of them a young woman, for the murder of Arthur Lydon rated only slightly more space than the average gangsta news reports.

Before long, the restless media had scurried off to other big stories, such as Dyana Cooper’s divorce from John Will-ins and Hobart Adler’s departure from the agency he had founded to become the CEO of the world’s fourth largest international entertainment conglomerate. One of his first executive announcements, Nikki noted, was the appointment of James Doyle as the head of worldwide acquisitions. She wondered if the top three conglomerates knew what they were in for.

Jack Lattimer took early retirement from the LAPD and just weeks later was diagnosed with cancer of the prostate. Peter Sandoval was never heard of again, at least not by that name.

An appeals court accepted the recommendation of the district attorney’s office that Mason Durant be retried for the murder of street vendor Ellis Hawke. The trial, with acting district attorney Raymond Wise handling the case for the prosecution, was a strictly file-and-forget item that resulted in another guilty verdict for Durant.