Deadly Lullaby (17 page)

“What do you know about her father?”

“Nothing but his address, which is apparently not good anymore.”

“Do you have Sonita's cellphone number?”

“Yes, it's contained in her file, an entire copy of which I'll provide you.”

“Can you give the number to me now? The one her mother gave us was disconnected weeks ago. I'm anxious to get my hands on the number of the phone Sonita's been using most recently. To find out who she's been talking to and what parts of town she was in yesterday.”

She opens the file in front of her, scanning a page and saying, “You're going to run a cell-tower search.”

“Yeah, it tells us which towers her phone pinged, which gives us a general idea of her movements. The call records also give us specific information about who she's communicated with.”

“I'm afraid this number isn't very recent,” she says, and reads it off.

I'm deflated. “That's the number her mother gave me. How about Monique's number?”

Taking a deep breath and turning to the computer, an irritated smile crossing her lips, she says, “Okay, but I probably shouldn't.” She taps the keys and reads off the number to me, then reads off Monique's last known address.

I feed Monique's number into my cell, say to Eleanor, “I'm going to call her now,” immediately dial it and just as immediately receive the usual recorded female voice informing me the number's no longer in service. I shake my head. “That number's dead, too. Have you—”

She glances at her watch.

“You running short?” I say.

“Yes.” She sighs. “I'm afraid so. I have another appointment in five minutes,
parents
”—a soft roll of her eyes—“and I have to prepare and can't keep them waiting. Do you have much more ground to cover?”

Not really, but what I say, smiling, is, “Some, yeah, but it can wait until later.”

She shoots a shy smile back and reaches for a manila file folder at the corner of her desk, hands it over. “There is some basic information in this file, and contact information for Khang. And there's the discipline reports and copies of letters and memos.”

“Thanks. Look, why don't I digest the file this afternoon and talk to Monique and whoever else I need to talk to, then…well, maybe we can talk about it over dinner tonight?”

She actually blushes.

A silence passes between us.

She finally says, “I'm sorry, Crooch, if I've led you on, but I'm afraid I'm not quite ready for a date yet. Maybe I'll be ready in a month or so when my divorce is over and my head is straighter. Okay?”

A
month
? “Oh, sure, I understand. I'll call you then,” I say, but I probably won't.

My cruiser is parked in the row of reserved slips at the head of the school parking lot. Energized from a professional level but personally deflated, I slide inside, boot my MDT and spread open the file she gave me in the passenger seat, eager to kick-start a COPLINK session. COPLINK is a slick integrated info system that's combined LAPD's six previously separate databases—dispatch, booking, criminal histories, field interviews, citations, corrections—and jacked them all into other info sources: auto registration from forty-six states, property records, business licensing, NCIC, Homeland Security, LexisNexis systems, and probably many others the department hasn't told us about. Constantly updates itself. Builds institutional memory. Connects all the dots and presents it to you in snapshot form so the information that once took weeks to compile and analyze now takes seconds.

Good old Uncle Khang's name gets fed into COPLINK first, and my brain crackles when his record materializes on the screen. His official story begins with him becoming a founding gang member of the Oriental Lazy Boyz in the late '90s when it formed in the Pueblo Del Rio housing project in South LA, his street name at the time being Flipper. Every cop in LA who hasn't tangled with the OLB up-close and personal has at least heard of it. Strictly a Cambodian gang in the beginning, OLB's founders and their parents had fled Pol Pot's killing fields and imported the insane brutality they'd witnessed there to the streets of LA. They warred with Hispanic and Vietnamese gangs until they carved out a solid territory in South Central, eventually splintering into cliques that now control other downtown areas. They're into everything illegal that turns a decent buck: drugs, robbery, extortion, prostitution, car theft, and most notoriously, assassination. Their most infamous hit is the one that went down against Haing Ngor, the Cambodian star of the movie
The Killing Fields,
but they've been credited with hundreds more—many of them message hits, the ones where their victims are disemboweled and/or dismembered, then left in a public place as a warning.

Khang's rap sheet is old, the last entry being sixteen years ago: two assault charges, both obvious shakedowns, a marijuana-trafficking charge, and three promoting-prostitution charges. The way Flipper smiled at the camera for his mug shots makes you think he knew without doubt he was going to beat the raps. He was right. He beat all five, all dismissed before trial. A BOLO was issued for Flipper in '97 in connection with the beating death of a rival gang member, one Ngo Loc Thieu, and he reportedly fled to Cambodia. Khang returned to LA in '01 and voluntarily presented to G & N (Gangs and Narcotics) for questioning. The Thieu case was cleared while Flipper was off the radar screen, so the investigating officer released him. In '02, Khang obtained a business license for KN Imports, LLC, now located just off Alameda in the warehouse district. A business article published since then reported that he imports goods from Cambodia—rice, garments, bamboo, silk—and painted him as a quiet leader of the growing Cambodian community. What the story didn't report was that horse and hash are major imports from Cambodia, too—as are prostitutes, most of them willing participants in the sex trade, but many others enslaved into it.

The information on Khang indicates countless ways he could be involved in Sonita's murder. I discover that the same thing goes for Sonita's sidekick, Monique Lefler, when I run her name through the info mill: Monique's been busted multiple times for curfew violations, once for a soliciting charge that was dismissed, and twice for marijuana possession. Monique's delinquency could have a lot to do with her mother, Chau Thi Lefler, who has a string of prostitution arrests dating back to the early '90s. She's now pulling three-to-five in Corona's dyke hotel for assault and promoting prostitution, the assault charge resulted from her emptying a small-caliber Saturday night special into a john who refused to pay up. Monique's father, Terry Lee Lefler, is comparatively clean, with only one arrest that sparks any interest at all, the one for promoting prostitution a couple of years back; the charge was dismissed but that doesn't mean he wasn't guilty, and it's probably just the tip of the iceberg. He could've been Sonita's pimp, maybe even his daughter's pimp—it happens all the time in LA, along with granddaughters, nieces, wives—and/or their drug supplier on the street. No matter how you spin it, there are a lot of questions to ask Khang, Monique Lefler, and her father. One rule I've formed over the years: whenever you suspect a big shot might be involved in a crime, you work your way to him from the bottom up; if you do your job right and have a little luck, you'll have a lot more to talk about when you get there.

The address Compton High has for Monique Lefler is on South Frailey in Compton, about half a block south of the intersection at Compton Avenue. I decide to cruise by there first, even though Eleanor told me expulsion papers mailed there were returned, and I'm not the least surprised to find the clapboard house deserted, the front yard overgrown with ankle-high weeds. While only one block away, the Leflers' new abode on South Lime is a significant step up from their old one. It's just across the street from East Rancho Dominquez Park, a municipal park famous for the tennis courts where Serena and Venus Williams learned to play. The house is a peach stucco bungalow that's entirely surrounded by a matching stucco fence, its windows and doors protected by decorative wrought iron and their frames trimmed in bright white paint. The grass has been recently mowed, the low hedges around the house trimmed and weeded. The property is deeded in the name of TLL, Inc., and I learned of the place only because Lefler's wife provided the address to prison authorities upon intake; score another one for COPLINK.

The waist-high gate is locked, so I hop it. I have to depress the door buzzer twice before Terry Lee Lefler answers the door, wearing nothing but black silk pajama bottoms. His complexion is medium to light brown, and his slim frame is muscular, his abs and biceps defined. No visible body art. His head is cleanly shaved and his goatee tightly trimmed and flecked gray, his right ear adorned with a thick gold hoop earring lined with about a carat of diamonds. He has a strong cleft chin and an unlined face, wide and well-defined lips that have a movie-star quality to them. My thought upon laying eyes on Terry Lee Lefler is he makes it through life on his looks and a personality he perceives as charming.

I badge him, introduce myself in the usual way, and ask if I can step inside to talk.

His big brown eyes narrow. “Unh-unh, no way,” he says, “not without a warrant,” shaking his head and stepping outside on the porch, pulling the door shut behind him. “I don't have anything to hide, understand, it's just a rule I live by.” He's about an inch taller than me, and puts his hands on his hips and looks down directly into my eyes, glowering. “You better tell me why you're here before I call in a complaint about you trespassing on my property. I keep that front gate locked for a reason.”

This in-your-face rooster shit gets tiresome, but it's not as bad as it could be, considering I'm confronting a pimp in Compton. “Do you know a young Cambodian girl named Sonita Khemra?”

His eyes become concerned, and he cocks his head and says, “Yeah, why?”

“We found her dead in MacArthur Park last night, strangled.”

He slumps sideways against the screen door, his head bowed and his eyes clamped shut, massaging his temples and saying, “Oh, no, man, oh, no…” He continues this lament for a few seconds before he snaps up his head, his eyes as wild and scared as an animal fleeing a forest fire. “Is my daughter okay?”

“I have no information that indicates she's not.”

He blows a big sigh of relief, nodding. “Thank God,” he says, and hauls himself off the door and straightens his posture, taking a deep breath. He concentrates on my eyes for a while before looking me up and down, sizing me up from the inside out. He finally says, “I need to sit down and have a drink to let this shit sink in. Let's say, just between me and you, that I have a bong on my coffee table with a bag of weed—hypothetically, understand. Would you be willing to overlook that so we can get out of the heat and talk this over in comfort?”

To ask me that question Lefler has to be either a good judge of men or have more balls than brain matter; my preliminary vote gets cast on the former. “I'll do you one or two better, Lefler. I'm not here to bust you for drug possession
or
for promoting prostitution
or
for any similar petty shit. I'm here to find out what I can to solve Sonita Khemra's murder.”

He studies me a beat, gauging my sincerity, turns and swings open the screen door, then shoulders open the main one, saying, “That's good enough for me. C'mon in. My lawyer would shit a brick, but I'm gonna help you all I can.”

Lefler snatches the bong and baggie from the coffee table and hustles down the hallway to the rear of the house. I hear the
scritch
of a lighter and gurgling sounds before I hear a door open and shut, and my hope is the weed loosens his tongue when he returns instead of making him paranoid and withdrawn. Waiting, I stand in the middle of the living room, noting that it's tidy and well-furnished, tasteful but not luxurious—polished wooden floors, a brown-and-burnt-orange three-piece leather sofa set, a midsize flat-screen, and decent stereo gear. The living room is separated from the kitchen to my left by an L-shaped breakfast bar that has four place settings neatly arranged on its top. What I can see of the kitchen is spotless. The only scents I detect in the room are a whiff of incense and a crisp, evergreen air freshener.

Having pulled on a nylon black tee, Lefler returns to the living room leading a Caucasian woman by her elbow. She's a pretty brunette with short, ruffled hair, thirtyish and fresh-faced, clutching a short, red robe to her midsection, smiling shyly while rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Detective Crucci, this is Marla. She's the only person in this house besides me and you. If you want to confirm that by lookin' around, do it now before she goes back to sleep.”

Lefler's intuition impresses me again; the first question out of my mouth was going to be whether anyone else was here. “Thanks for the offer, but I believe you.”

Lefler whispers a word or two in Marla's ear and kisses her cheek; she flashes me a shy farewell smile and pads back to the bedroom.

“I'm having a glass of red wine,” he says, turning toward the kitchen. “I have soft drinks and iced tea, but if you want to have a wine or a beer with me, I won't tell on you.”

“A beer sounds good, whatever kind you have,” I say. Regulations be damned. I almost always accept the offer of alcoholic drinks from people I interview when they're drinking, too, especially in their home; acceptance of their hospitality warms them to me and puts us on common ground.

He returns with a goblet of wine and a bottle of Heineken, hands the beer to me and gestures for me to sit in the leather easy chair at the head of the sofa. He falls into the sofa to my left with a
phoosh,
takes a drink of wine, and looks dead at me, his jaw set and his eyes showing not a hint of effect from the weed. “How'd you connect me to Sonita?”

“I won't reveal my sources, but it's no secret she and your daughter Monique were friends. Before we talk any further, though, let's be absolutely certain we're talking about the same girl.” I withdraw Sonita's school picture from my breast pocket and reach across the space between us to display it to him.

A flash of hope instantly disappears from his eyes as he gives me a grim nod. “That's her. What the fuck happened?”

I summarize her discovery in the park.

He says, “You have any idea who did it?”

“We have a suspect in custody,” I say, “a guy named Taquan Oliver.” I tell him the circumstantial evidence against Oliver is strong but I'm not totally convinced he's guilty. He says he's never heard of Oliver and doesn't recognize him from the picture stored on my iPhone. “Oliver told me this morning that he saw a man standing over Sonita in the bushes just after she died. He described him as short and muscular with short, slicked-back hair. Any idea who this man might be?”

“No.”

“All right,” I say. “Tell me how you know Sonita.”

He leans back, holding the goblet of wine between his legs with both hands. “Sonita and Monique have been friends for about a year. She's done overnights here, has sat right where I'm sittin' and has had meals with us.” He shakes his head and sighs. “Her being dead, man, is unreal.”

“What kind of girl was she?”

“Funny, perky…Everybody says it about dead kids, I guess, but she was what you'd call
full of life,
really. She had a nice sense of humor, and wasn't scared of anything. She wasn't mean, you know, but she was tough, a street kid and proud of it. She really liked hangin' out here, liked the attention I gave her and the food I cooked her.” He shakes his head again, chuckles, his voice growing thinner and thinner. “Crucci, that little thing could
eat,
man, like a pregnant wolf.” His voice is close to breaking, and he wipes his eyes, sniffs and looks away.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

This gives him pause, makes him shift in his seat. “A couple weeks, maybe a little longer.” He thinks a bit before wiping his eyes again and leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Don't peg me as a bad father, all right? I haven't seen my daughter in two weeks, either. Monique split not long after Marla moved in.” He shrugs. “They don't get along. Marla tried like hell, but Monique won't meet her even partway. You probably know her mother, my wife Chau, is in prison, right?” While I nod he says, “Monique got pissed I'm running with a woman other than her mother.” Another shrug. “Chau knows what I'm doing, shit, and doesn't care. If there's a woman on earth who sympathizes with a man's needs, it's Chau….Anyway, I'm still in contact with Monique by cell—almost entirely texts—and she says she's doing fine, has plenty to eat and has shelter, but I'm not sure where she's staying.”