Three Shirt Deal (2008) (10 page)

"Exactly," Secada said.

"And despite this, Captain Sasso closed the case?"

"Worse than that, she filed a PSB charge of insubordination against us for working it after we were told not to," she said.

He turned back from the window. "Sounds like you've got a little bit of a reckless streak, Detective Llevar." Then he smiled, showing beautiful teeth. "Don't get me wrong, I like reckless when it comes to upholding the tenets of the law. It shows a commitment to principle."

All of this directed exclusively to Secada. If I wanted this guy's attention, I was going to have to drop trou and expose myself.

"If the department ever knew we were over here, we'd both get in major trouble, so we're counting on your discretion," Scout said.

"I'm glad you came." He turned his heroic gaze out the window again. "I was part of that plea bargain. If what you're telling me checks out, then we've made a terrible mistake."

"And you're willing to admit it?" Secada asked. She leaned forward, showing him a nice swell of breasts.

"As you undoubtedly know, I'm running for mayor in a fe
w m
onths." More great Latino porcelain came on display. "There are those in my campaign who would say that to admit such an error would cause me problems politically, but I see it differently. A man has to have a code, a standard he lives up to. My job is to stand up for what's right. If I make a mistake, then I'm honor bound to admit it. If I sent this boy away on bad facts, then I damn sure should be the one to fix it." Somewhere up in heaven angels were singing.

"Thank you, sir," Secada said, smiling. Then she glanced at me and raised an impatient eyebrow, prompting me to say something.

"Thanks," I muttered.

He crossed to his desk and handed us each his card.

"My private line is on here. I suggest maybe you two should drop your investigation now and let me run with it. If you stay involved, you're gonna have more trouble with Jane. I'll try and help out there, but there's only so much I can do. She can be difficult sometimes."

We thanked him again and prepared to leave.

"So how do I reach you?" Tito said, addressing Secada again.

We both gave him our cards. Mine was going into some bottom desk drawer. Hers would undoubtedly end up in the glassine section of his wallet.

"I hope you can reopen this so Shane and I don't cook in the gravy," Scout said.

"I'll think of something. How 'bout if I tell PSB that we picked up some investigative discrepancies on this situation during a standard case review."

"That should work," Scout said, smiling widely at him.

"I'll be in touch," Tito promised and led us to the door. "Listen, Detectives, I want to tell you something. Even though the insubordination charge is a problem, I salute your dedication to the truth in this case. After the parade has passed and everything's been adjudicated, it's much easier to just look the other way. You did the hard thing, which is the right thing."

"We really appreciate your time, sir," Secada beamed. I felt a twinge of annoyance, or was it jealousy? "Tito," he reminded her. "Tito," she said.

And then, we were out of his office and standing in the hall. "What a doll," Scout enthused, "And he's still single." "Still got your wallet?"

"Come on, he's charming. This is just what we needed, Shane." "Yeah."

"Look at you. Why don't you smile? And what's with this black-on-black ensemble? You look like Steven Seagal. Who picked that outfit, for God's sake?" "This just feels way too easy," I said.

Chapter
12.

I LEFT SECADA IN THE PARKING LOT. SHE SEEMED AS IF A GREAT

weight had just been lifted from her as she got into her slick-back and tooled off toward the Bradbury Building.

I guess I'm just such a natural skeptic that I couldn't accept a good break even when I got one. Or maybe it was that my luck had been running so cold, I couldn't quite believe in a crusader D
. A
. willing to flag a prosecutorial mistake on the eve of his own mayoral election, no matter how great his teeth or warm his smile.

Since I was already in Van Nuys, standing in the parking lot of the prosecutor's office, and had the name of Tru Hickman's court
-
appointed public defender in my file,
I
decided to look her up and see what light she could shed on this mess.

The Public Defenders Division is part of the prosecutor's office, so I found myself on the second floor of the same building I'd just exited. The P
. D
.'s office was a cluttered cube farm full of fresh-faced recent law school graduates. Tru had told me that his P
. D
. had red hair, braids, and freckles and looked like she just graduated from high school.

That pretty much fit my take when I located Yvoune Hope seated behind a battered metal desk that looked like it had been used to block a year's worth of slap shots from an NHL hockey team. She seemed implausibly young. Pippi Longstocking with a law degree. But that was only until you bothered to look deep into her blue-green eyes. They were tired, angry eyes that had seen enough misery to fill a prison.

"Truit Joseph Hickman confessed to killing his mother," she said after I told her why I was there.

"Miscarriage of justice," I said.

"Yep. We get a lot of that around here. John Dillinger, John Gotti, and A
l
Capone. They all got fucked by the system, too." A cynic. So young and her soul was already poisoned by her experiences.

"Take a look at some of this," I said, and pushed the folder I'd compiled across the desk at her.

Yvonne Hope didn't open it. "Lemme guess, rubber hoses in the I-room, right?"

"You shorten your last name from 'Hopeless'?"

"Don't be a smart-ass. I've been on this job for almost two years now. The average for P
. D
.'s in this meat house is eighteen months. The burnout rate is through the roof. You wanta know why?"

"Not really."

"I'll tell you anyway. Because just about everybody I represent is a scumbag liar. Including this guy." She tapped her short, chewed-nail ring finger on my folder. "I have baby-rapists and child molesters as clients. I have to try and get deals for people you wouldn't waste a bullet on. My job is to ignore the crime and save the criminal. It can warp you. Tru Hickman killed his mother. He copped to it. Now he's up in Corcoran and it's worse than he thought so he's had a change of heart. Next case. You got any idea how often I see that?"

"Listen, Yvonne. Can I call you that?"

"Vonnie."

I'm not some bleeding-heart, hand-wringing, social activist, Vonnie. I'm a homicide cop. I scrape dead people off the pavement for a living. If you want to compare battle scars, I bet, with my years on the job, I'll beat yours. I'm telling you, Lieutenant Devine and Tito Morales flushed this kid on bad evidence. Pardon me for saying it, but you were supposed to defend him and you let it happen."

She sat there, all hundred and six pounds of her, and looked at me with eyes that had been hardened to the approximate texture of pale, green marbles.

"Okay, I'm listening. But I'm a stone cold bitch so make it convincing."

I gave her the rest of it, stopping when I got to the bloody shoe prints.

"Did you ever finish the match on those prints? I can't find a record of it anywhere."

"Probably never happened," she said matter-of-factly. "After we dropped the special circumstances and he copped to the murder, the plea went to my division supervisor, got signed off on, and shipped to the prosecutor's floor upstairs to get executed."

"How about the lie detector test? Were you there when he took the poly?"

"No. He did that before he asked for an attorney, before I got the case."

"It's also nowhere to be found," I said. "You ever see it?"

"He confessed to the crime. What part of that sentence is confusing to you? The confession makes the damn poly irrelevant."

"Brian Devine told him he flunked the poly. He panicked. That's why he confessed. Don't tell me you've never seen that before. A ten-year veteran of Homicide is now standing here telling you the wrong guy is probably in jail. I think this VSL gangster, Mike Church, is the doer."

She sat behind her scarred metal desk, still clocking me with machine gunner's eyes. "Whatta you want?" she finally asked.

"You handled his case a year ago. I think it was a miscarriage of justice. I guess Pm over here attorney shopping. If I can get enough evidence to refile, how'd you like to have another swing at this? Go for a writ of habeas corpus and a new trial?"

"My division chief is going to love that," she sneered. "My job is to see how many of these things I can kick down and plead out. How fast I do it counts. It's all about plumbing around here. My boss doesn't like the cleared cases to bubble back up in the bowl. What goes down must stay down."

"In Homicide, I've got the same problem. That doesn't mean either of us wants to see innocent people convicted of crimes they didn't commit. At least I hope not."

She watched me for a moment, then sighed. "Okay, Detective Scully, you get me something I can use, and I'm not talking about hearsay air-balls from Tru's old meth buddies or an alibi statement from his Aunt Bea. I need something watertight as a frog's ass. If it looks good, I'll take a shot. But don't waste your time coming back here with bullshit."

Hardly Pippi Longstocking, I thought as I stood to go.

"Thanks. Gimme your card." She did and I saw that her two years' seniority in the P
. D
.'s office had allowed her to rise to the position of Deputy Assistant. I started to go, but she cleared her throat, so I turned to look back.

"You know, Tru Hickman won me that month's loser pool," she said.

"I'm sorry?"

"We've got a pool around here. Everybody puts in fifty bucks and picks a number. Then we ask every client who gets convicted how much he or she weighs. We add it all up and at the end of the month, the P
. D
. who comes closest wins the pool. I remember Hickman's case was finally settled and he was sentenced on the thirtieth of August. My number was twenty-five hundred pounds. Tru weighed one-sixteen. Put me a hundred pounds off the number. I won nine hundred and fifty dollars. Went to Vegas with two girlfriends, got drunk, screwed a guy whose name I can't remember. Don something. I always wondered if part of me accepted that plea so I could win the pool. Never been one hundred percent sure. After twenty-four months of shoveling human garbage, I still wonder about it."

I stood there and looked at her, not sure what to say to that.

"Know what we called the pool?"

"Haven't a clue."

"Justice by the pound." She frowned. "Some pretty cold shit, huh?"

Chapter
13.

IN THE ELEVATOR ON MY WAY TO THE LOBBY, I REFLECTED ON the damage that working in the criminal justice system could do to the people who pulled the ropes and turned the wheels. Yvonne Hope had undoubtedly started out as a caring person. She probably went into the P
. D
.'s office with hopes of defending the downtrodden. But the endless supply of craven liars she got as clients killed the dream. Calluses had quickly formed to protect her from the ugly reality of her job. It had cost her a large measure of her humanity.

Nobody is immune. Cops also develop dark humor to protect themselves. After the probationer period and a rookie year in squad cars, a lot of it spent prying corpses off their steering columns or rolling in on the worst that mankind has to offer, it's hard to see things the way you used to. It says "Protect and Serve" on the door of your patrol car, but after a short time, it's hard to know why you'd want to. After finally making it to detective you're then given the pleasure of walking into a crime scene where some dope-crazed lunatic has stabbed his wife in a fit of jealous rage and spread the remains of his three grade-school children all over the walls of the apartment. The humanity you once felt toward you
r f
ellow man slowly starts leaking out of you. Nothing seems outside the bounds of normal behavior.

After I left Vonnie, the memory of her was still with me. Those eyes were still glaring defiantly in the back of my mind. I got into my car and headed farther west. There was one other thing I wanted to check on while I was out here.

I'd looked up Valley towing services in the Yellow Pages earlier and had the name of one in Van Nuys that sounded like it might belong to Mike Church. The quarter-page ad pictured two tow trucks backed up to each other so that the towing arms formed a steeple in the center of the ad. The caption under the picture read:

CHURCH OF DESTRUCTION TOWING AND AUTO BODY WORK

This was followed by a lot of repair jargon: "Bondo Specialists"; "Qualified in Sparkle Paint Jobs"; "We'll Pimp Your Ride"; "Se Habla Espanol."

The address at 6358 Midline Drive was less than two miles from Church's house. I wasn't that far away, so I headed over to take a look.

Ten minutes later I parked across the street from a very shabby-looking auto body shop with church of destruction painted in faded red lettering under the eaves of a tin-roofed concrete block building. There was one paint bay and two body and fender garages, both busy. Hispanic men wielding hammers and metal sanders were creating an symphony of screaming metal. The yard out front was a clutter of automotive junk and rusting Detroit carcasses. There were trashed motorcycles, dirty oil drums, and old lumber scattered in amongst the twisted wrecks. It looked like a backyard in Tijuana. Two heavy tow rigs, big, muscular eight-wheel monsters with rear-end dualies, stout suspension, and long towing arms were parked inside the gate.