The Burning Plain (24 page)

“I understand that Chuck has to appease the good old boys in the department,” he said, rising heavily to his feet. “Hell, I’m one of them, but when you start to turn a blind eye to criminal activity in the ranks …” He shrugged. “I don’t like the exclusionary rule any more than the next cop, or Miranda or knock and notice, or any of that shit, but it’s the law. If you’re a cop, you follow the law. Period. No picking and choosing.

“What about that kid you rousted the first time I met you?” I reminded him.

He looked puzzled, then smiled. “The little gangbanger? Sure I scared him. But I didn’t drop dope on him or take him out to Antelope Valley and beat the shit out of him. Did I?”

“There’s no such thing as violating the law a little,” I said. “An illegal detention is an illegal detention, with or without the trimmings.”

He patted my shoulder. “We all draw the line somewhere, I guess. I can live with mine. You know, it occurred to me, listening to you, that that first murder is a lot different from the other two.”

“I know. I’ve thought about that, too.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Interesting. Take care of yourself.”

Bob Travis had agreed to meet me for dinner to discuss the developments in his case. That evening I drove into West Hollywood, to a restaurant called the French Marketplace which occupied the bottom floor and terrace of a faux New Orleans mansion; painted brick, green shutters and fancy ironwork. The terrace fronted Santa Monica Boulevard. Wrought-iron tables were lined in two rows, one against the wall and the other against the railing, a narrow aisle between them for pumped-up waiters in skin-tight black trousers and little red aprons to deliver big plates of bad food to an equally pumped-up male clientele. The smells of grease and designer cologne hung in the stale air as I came up the steps to the restaurant and scanned the terrace for Travis. I was cruised in a bored sort of way by a streaked blond picking slices of mandarin orange out of his Chinese chicken salad. Behind me, a bus rumbled by, spraying exhaust. A thin, handsome waiter with a French accent offered to seat me, but then Travis came out of the building. His clothes, a yellow knit jersey and tight, faded jeans, seemed chosen to advertise his progress at the gym. He looked relaxed and happy, and I saw he was, in fact, if not the great beauty to which he aspired, a pleasant-looking man with a firm jaw and gentle eyes. Had he been straight, he would’ve been a suburban dad with wife, kids, dog and Volvo. Instead, he was stuffed into clothes that were too young for him. He probably thought the fashion statement he was making was “Look at me,” but to me his appearance called out “Find me.”

“Mr. Rios,” he said. “I had to make a call.” He pointed to a table by the railing empty but for a glass of iced tea and crumpled napkin. “I’m over there.”

We passed the blond who had made a little pile of orange slices on his bread plate and was now removing slivers of almonds from his salad. At the table, we perused oversize menus on which most of the items were prefaced with either “blackened” or “Cajun.” I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich.

“I wanted to bring you up to speed on the case,” I said, after the French waiter took our orders. I told him about my review of the evidence and my meeting with Odell and Serena Dance. I explained that I had agreed to submit him to a lineup. A furrow deepened in his forehead between his eyes.

“A lineup? Won’t that incriminate me?”

“No, it’ll eliminate you as a suspect,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“Aren’t you?” I asked, studying him. “I mean, if you weren’t behind the wheel of the car when those two men got in, the witnesses won’t pick you out. Right?”

“Right,” he agreed quickly. “This is all kind of scary to me. Before this, the only trouble I ever had with the police was speeding tickets.”

Our food came. A stream of grease oozed from his hamburger, congealing on the plate. My grilled sandwich was burned.

“I don’t understand how this place stays in business,” I said. “The food’s inedible.”

Travis grinned. “Look behind you.”

I glanced over my shoulder. A man was walking toward us. He wore a pair of cutoff jeans and a black tank top. His thighs were rock hard, his thick arms corded with heavy veins and he could have crushed a beer can between his pecs. He cruised slowly past the terrace, looking straight ahead, seemingly unaware of the commotion at the tables, but then he stopped and stripped off his shirt. The hush that descended on the terrace was like the hush in a theater that precedes a standing ovation but there were only whispers and giggles as he walked on.

Travis said, “It’s the best show in town, especially in the summer.” He looked at me, gauged my expression. “Not your type?”

“I don’t specialize,” I said. “Isn’t Nick Donati more yours?”

He blushed. “He said you knew about us.”

“He led me to believe it was over between you.”

“It’s complicated,” he said. Donati’s phrase. “In the Industry, you can be out, but you can’t be out out.”

“Aren’t you out at work?”

“Yeah, but I’m a production designer. I’m supposed to be gay. Nick’s upper-level management. He has to keep it private.”

“That mean no boyfriend?”

“It’s hard because I really love him,” Travis said. “I want everyone to know. I want to live with him. That’s what most of our fights are about. We break up, we get back together. All this trouble has brought us a lot closer.”

“That’s one good thing, then,” I said. We picked at our meals for a few minutes, talking about things unrelated to the case. Then I recalled what I meant to ask him. “Last night Nick said you had something to tell me about the case. What is it?”

He swigged his tea, put the glass down. “Yeah, remember you told me to try to figure out what weekends I was using the cab?”

“I remember. Did you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I definitely did not use it the first weekend of June.”

The weekend Alex was murdered.

“You’re sure?”

“I was trying to reconstruct when my car broke down,” he said. “I looked at the receipt from the mechanic. I didn’t take it in until that Wednesday, so it must have been working over the weekend. Does that help me?”

It was further evidence he couldn’t have been driving the cab the night Amerian was killed. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s very helpful. Bring the receipt to the lineup.”

The sheriffs conducted their lineups down at Bauchet Street, site of the men’s county jail. Every new deputy sheriff started out as a jail guard at that squalid, violent and overcrowded pile of concrete. In a few cell blocks, the deputies patrolled from catwalks suspended between the rows of cells where they monitored the floor on closed-circuit cameras, rarely coming into contact with the prisoners. For the most part, though, they worked the floor, where they were vastly outnumbered and in constant fear for their safety, a combination that bred paranoia and encouraged brutality. I’d been in and out of a lot of jails and prisons, but there wasn’t anywhere like the LA County Men’s Jail; to step inside was to step into a funnel of rage. Bob Travis went chalk-white when I led him in for the lineup, and I think he would have grabbed my hand if some instinct for self-preservation hadn’t stopped him.

“He’s terrified,” I said to Serena, as we watched Travis and five other men file into the room on the other side of the one-way mirror.

“He looks all right to me,” she replied, plainly understanding the purpose of my remark.

“If this wasn’t pro forma,” I said, “I’d object to proceeding with the lineup until he calmed down.”

“Why don’t we get started.” She went to the door and said, “Mac, the first witness, please.”

“Mac?” I said. “You can’t mean Gaitan.”

Before she could answer, he swaggered into the room, followed by a child. When our eyes met, I think we would have snarled if we could. My gaze flicked past him to the child who, I quickly realized, was not a child, but a young man. Willie Wright. The hustler who’d seen Jack Baldwin climb into the Lucky Taxi. He had a soft, spoiled prettiness and glanced around the room glassy-eyed.

“Are you ready, Willie?” Serena said.

From the depths of whatever drug he was on, the boy said, “Yes, ma’am,” in a soft, hillbilly drawl.

“Mac,” she said to Gaitan. He read the standard admonition. “You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Willie said, a bit more firmly. “Yes sir, I do. You want me to tell you if one of those men took Jackie.”

“That’s right,” Serena said. “Take a look, Willie.”

“You have to be positive,” I said.

“Just tell me if you recognize any of them,” Serena said, throwing me a warning look.

Willie Wright went to the window, standing so close his breath fogged the glass. “No,” he said.

“Take as long as you need,” Serena said.

“That’s coercive.”

She made a sour face. “That’s absurd.”

Willie turned slowly from the window. “Jackie was my friend. I’d tell you if I saw the man. He ain’t one of them. They’re too young.” The little speech seemed to exhaust him. “Can I go now?”

“All right,” Serena said. “Thanks, Willie. Mac?”

“I did see him once,” Willie drawled, as Gaitan tried to usher him out of the room. “In the paper …”

“Wait a minute,” I said.

“Let him go, Henry,” Serena said, bristling. “He didn’t ID your client and he’s obviously under the influence.”

They left the room.

“What is Gaitan doing here?”

“He interviewed these witnesses,” she said, “and he asked to be here. I didn’t see any reason to say no.”

“After what I told you about him?”

“Let’s just get on with it, all right?” she snapped, jaw quivering.

“What’s with you?”

She went to the door. “Mac. Mr. Gray, please.”

Parker Gray, the sex-club bouncer, was turtle-necked and gargantuan in his pressed walking shorts and red, white and blue tank top with an American Gladiator logo. There were heavy patches of acne on his big shoulders, a side effect of steroids. He studied the men on the platform carefully.

“Could they please turn to the side?” he asked, with the faintest of lisps. “Thank you.” He knotted his hands behind his back and examined them. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t be sure.”

I skipped a breath. “Do you mean you think you recognize one of them?”

“The man I saw looked something like these men,” he explained apologetically, “but none of them look exactly like the man I saw. Does that make sense?”

“In other words,” I said, “you don’t see that man here today.”

“No, I guess not.”

“That’s a miss,” I told Serena.

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “Do you need more time, Mr. Gray? Would that help.”

“No,” he said, surer now. “I don’t see him.”

“Thank you,” she said. Gaitan let him out but didn’t leave with him. I heard Serena draw a deep breath and said, “There’s one more witness.”

“What?”

“The investigation’s ongoing,” she said stiffly. “Another witness has stepped forward.”

“When did this happen?”

“A couple of days ago. I didn’t mention her because we hadn’t taken a statement from her until yesterday.” I watched her glance at Gaitan. “Was it yesterday, Detective?”

“That’s right.”

I exploded. “You bring me down here with my client and forget to mention you have a third eyewitness? This is bullshit.”

“You agreed to the lineup,” she said defensively.

“I didn’t agreed to be sandbagged by you and this—” I stared at Gaitan. “This scumbag.” He took a step toward me. “Just try it, you asshole.”

“
Maricón
…”

“Stop it,” Serena said, jumping between us. “Get out of here, Mac.”

I felt his breath on my face. He told her, “You better remember whose side you’re on, lady.”

“I said get out.”

He backed off. “I’m bringing her in,” he said.

Serena went to the intercom and instructed the deputy in charge of the line-up to clear the room. “You won’t do anything until I tell you to,” she told Gaitan.

He raised his hands. “Whatever. You’re the boss.”

After he left, I said, “What’s going on, here?”

There was a door opposite the one from which Gaitan had exited, “Come with me,” she said. “There’s a conference room over there. We need to talk.”

“I’ll say.”

I
FOLLOWED HER
into yet another windowless room with scuffed walls and a battered table. The kind of room where I seemed to spend a lot of my life. She tossed her briefcase on the table and removed a file from it. Without looking up at me she said, “Here’s a copy of Ms. Schilling’s statement. She’s the new witness.”

I grabbed the two handwritten sheets from her. “Why didn’t you mention this when I first got here?”

Nervously, she smoothed her skirt. “I hoped one of the other witnesses would ID your client.”

“But if not, you had this in reserve,” I said. “And if you’d told me any sooner, you know I would’ve walked. You played this wrong. We’re leaving anyway.”

“At least read the statement,” she said, in a voice that was halfway between imperious and imploring.

I started reading. Joanne Schilling lived in an apartment two blocks from the alley where Alex Amerian’s body had been found. At around five-thirty
A.M.
, on the morning Alex’s body was found, she was out walking her dog when a blue and white cab exited the alley at a high rate of speed and nearly ran her over. The driver stopped just in time to let her cross, then sped off. She got a good look at his face. The description she gave matched Bob Travis down to pale eyebrows.

“Gaitan took this statement?”

Serena colored. “Don’t start, Henry. I’ve talked to the woman. She repeated her description almost verbatim.”

“Bob wasn’t driving the cab that weekend,” I said. I showed her the receipt from his auto mechanic indicating his car had gone into the shop the Tuesday after the murder.

She studied the receipt, swallowed. “If I was going to kill someone,” she said, returning the receipt, “I wouldn’t use my car, either.”

“Gaitan is using you to help him frame an innocent man,” I said.

She scowled. “That’s so incredibly offensive to me.”

“You brought me down here under false pretenses,” I replied. “That’s more offensive.”