House of Smoke (17 page)

She laughs. “That’s debatable—the ‘famous’ part.”

“I heard you were at my shop earlier,” he says.

“How’d you know that?” she asks, astonished. “I just left there.”

“The walls have ears,” he tells her. “Especially when it concerns you.”

“Well, I’m impressed. I do need to pick your brain, though.”

“I’ll meet you at the cafe at Hendry’s Beach in an hour,” he tells her. “It’s a nice day. We can take a walk.”

Talking on the phone with this man is okay because it’s anonymous; her going down in person would be another matter, she isn’t welcomed where he works. His colleagues view private detectives with strong skepticism. But this man talking to her on the phone from his desk likes Kate, he knows she’s good people, he’ll help her out when he can if he thinks it’s the right thing to do, but they shouldn’t be seen together.

Kate and Juan Herrera stroll down the beach in a westerly direction, away from the restaurant and parking area. It’s midweek—except for mothers and kids there are few people about; a good place to not be seen while taking a walk.

Kate had gone home and changed. Now she’s wearing last year’s Big Dog Fiesta T-shirt over a pair of cutoffs, and a big floppy straw hat on her head for protection against the sun. She’s barefoot, she left her sandals in the car. Herrera, by contrast, has on a short-sleeve dress shirt, tie, seersucker sports coat, slacks. It’s his lunch hour, he came straight from the office. He doesn’t even bother to take his well-worn Dexter dress shoes off; as they walk the hard-packed sand along the water’s edge he takes care not to get them wet, salt ruins the leather. His pistol rides his hip, hidden under his jacket, which is why he’s kept the jacket on.

He’s a tall, rangy man, a few years older than she is, good-looking. He appeals to her—but he’s married with kids. She doesn’t know if he fools around or not; being married and a cop automatically puts him off limits, a double whammy. She has to keep vigilant in her stand against dating cops; it’s like quitting smoking, you don’t tempt fate by trying it even one time. Her relationship with Herrera is clean; better that way.

“You’re not exactly inconspicuous, dressed like this,” she teases him. “What if someone sees us?”

He shrugs, loosens his tie. “What I do on my lunchtime, that’s my business,” he says dismissively. “Meeting you at work, that would be waving a red flag.”

She knows a fair amount about him, from the several conversations over coffee they’ve had during the past year. A detective in the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department for over twenty years, Herrera is an eastside homeboy who joined the force after his tour of Vietnam. A lieutenant for a long time, he’s advanced as high as he’ll go.

After she started taking on Carl’s caseload her natural instinct had been to go for information to the people she knew, the police; but she found out very quickly—as soon as they learned she was working as a PI—that door wasn’t open to her anymore. Oh, they were nice enough, they weren’t rude or nasty, nothing like that. They just didn’t tell her one thing she couldn’t have learned from the papers, the library, or her computer network. There are two kinds of people in this world: cops and everyone else. She isn’t a cop anymore.

Herrera, Kate learned, was the exception. He’s going to night school, getting his master’s degree in sociology at UCSB; working with kids and gangs is where he wants to go at some point in his life, he’s told her with strong conviction. He knows she’s been shut out and that hasn’t sat well with him. He doesn’t believe the police have a mission to protect society from itself, and he doesn’t go along with the attitude of secrecy and benign deceit that too many cops practice.

“It’s bullshit,” he’d said when they’d first gotten to know each other and were swapping war stories. “We don’t have the answers any more than anyone else. Just because I’ve got a badge and a gun doesn’t make me omniscient.”

She’d never known a cop who used words like “omniscient.” It was little things like that that made her feel she could trust him, that he wasn’t using her. That and the fact he didn’t hit on her.

“So what is it you need my expert advice on today?” he asks.

“The suicide in your jail.”

A wave washes up in front of them. The wet cold brine splashes on her feet, a tangy, stinging feeling. Herrera sidesteps the water, attempting to keep his wingtips dry.

“You serious?” he asks, looking at her sideways.

“Is that a problem?” she asks, searching his face.

“Not for us,” he tells her. Without breaking stride he bends down to pick up a shell, a small mussel shell, perfectly ridged. “Unless somebody decides to make it one.”

“What can you tell me?” she asks.

“It’s cut and dried. The man was staring at life without parole, he took the lesser of two evils.”

“But he hadn’t even been arraigned. Why so soon?”

He shrugs.

She hesitates a moment before continuing, she doesn’t want to turn him off, but she has to say what she’s thinking. “You don’t sound like you’re being completely open about this, Juan.”

“This one’s different,” he admits.

“Like how?”

He polishes the shell on his tie, sticks it in his jacket pocket.

“It was a screwup.”

He picks up another shell, a flat one, skims it out across the water. It skips three times before it sinks.

“It was a fiasco for the department. Somebody dies in your jail, it’s lousy public relations.”

“Frank Bascomb’s friends must not be very happy, either,” Kate says.

“Frank Bascomb? Hey, fuck him, the guy was a dope dealer. That’s the bottom of the food chain, down there with child molesters.”

“You knew him as a dealer?” Kate asks. “Before this incident?” she adds. That surprises her; she doesn’t know anything about Frank Bascomb, except Laura would have, and why would Laura hire a detective if Frank really had been dirty? Of course, Laura had been duped by Frank, so maybe there had been others.

“No, I didn’t,” he says quickly, covering. “That was a libel, I shouldn’t be talking like that.” He pauses. “You hear things. In this job hearing things is a part of it. You were a cop, you know that.”

“What kind of things did you hear?” she presses.

Instead of answering her, he asks his own question: “Who hired you? Who wants to know about this?”

“Laura Sparks. That’s confidential, of course,” she adds. She has no good reason to hide this from him, he won’t tell anyone, and she wants to keep him on her side.

“Figures,” he says, “since she was there. Lucky for her she wasn’t there then. She probably feels guilty, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“She seems like she’s a nice girl, even if she does rake the department over the coals in that horseshit newspaper of hers. She was his sweetie,” he adds, half-question, half-accusation. “That’s what I hear.”

“That I wouldn’t know either,” Kate lies. Laura is her client. Kate will be straight with Herrera whenever she can, but the client’s privacy and protection comes first.

“That’s the story out there,” he says, vaguely waving his arm towards a cloud.

“Anyway, how did a prime suspect in a major drug bust wind up in a common tank with a bunch of drunks and crazies?” Kate asks, trying to focus the conversation.

This is the first sixty-four-thousand-dollar question; if she can find out what really happened—not only in that tank but why he was in there at all—she might get several steps closer to the truth.

“How?” Herrera says. “We made a mistake. People make mistakes, even the police, or don’t you remember?” He grimaces. “The officer in charge that night has been put on administrative leave.”

“That’s all? Just a plain old mistake?”

“What else could it be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he got somebody angry and he was being taught a lesson,” she ventures cautiously.

“Somebody?” His voice takes on an immediate edge. “Like one of our people?”

She shrugs her shoulders.

“Maybe that’s how they do things in the big city, Kate, but that’s not Santa Barbara style. We’re clean—as clean as we can get, which is pretty good most of the time. We’re too square not to be. Like the T-shirt says, shit happens.”

“Did you guys interview the men who were in the tank with Bascomb?”

“Of course.”

“What can you tell me about them? Any of them.”

“Your garden-variety bunch of drunks and crazies.”

“Did any of them have records?”

“They all have records. What kind of people do you think go to jail?”

“For a violent crime. Assault, rape, B&E, attempted murder. Stuff like that.”

“These pieces of shit? They’re a bunch of sad cases, they can’t get out of the way of their own vomit. I heard secondhand a couple of them might have been petty drug dealers or low-rent pimps, but that’s conjecture.” He shakes his head, sadly. “These poor bastards. You think they should’ve been in there in the first place? Man gets drunk, he goes to jail? What kind of society is that? Most of those people are so screwed up they can barely remember their own names. They ought to be in an institution where they can get treatment, which is where they used to be until they let all the inmates out of the asylum.” He picks up a handful of sand, sifts it through his fingers. “This is my favorite subject. Don’t let me get started. The cops and the schools, we’re supposed to cure all society’s ills. It’s a crock,” he spits out.

“Were they interrogated about the suicide?”

“Of course.”

“And?”

“The same story, more or less. Everything was filtered through a haze of booze, so there’s holes, but the general theme held up. They went to sleep and when they woke up—hello, swinging from the rafters. Enough to cure a man of drinking, at least for a day or two.”

“Are their names and addresses on file?”

“For what it’s worth, yes. For what it’s worth, it’s worthless. You think people like these have a real address, or real ID? Like they have valid California driver’s licenses and Visa cards? They sleep on the street and they use whatever name pops into their head at the time. They’re poor, pathetic bastards.”

“So what?” Kate counters. “Why couldn’t one of them, some, all of them be a suspect? Frank Bascomb died in the same cell they were occupying.”

“One of
them
killed Bascomb? You think that’s possible?”

“It’s possible. Not likely, but why isn’t it possible?”

Herrera laughs. “Go back to Oakland, Kate. You’ve obviously got a more capable breed of criminal there. Here’s why it’s not logical,” he tells her. “If these sad morons are going to commit great bodily harm they aren’t going to go to the trouble of stringing a man up. That’s hard work. They’re going to stomp him to death is what they’re going to do. Kick his ribs in, his eyes, kick in his teeth, kick him in the balls, wherever.”

He looks at her to see if he’s getting through.

“You were a cop. You know this is a futile exercise. Now look—I have no intention of telling you how to conduct your business, but you could raise some hopes that shouldn’t be raised, and you could piss off some people who you don’t want to be unfriendly to you.”

“Are you one of them?” she asks, beginning to get pissed.

“I’m a police officer, not a politician,” he answers without answering. “Can I give you a piece of free advice?” he continues. It’s a rhetorical question. “Do a pro forma investigation for your client, and then bail out. For your own good.”

“Why?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you? The Sparks family was highly embarrassed by Frank Bascomb, that’s why. They are not at all unhappy that he met his accidental demise, except for Laura, who’s too young to know better.”

“That’s pretty cold.”

“It’s a fact of life.”

“A cold fact.”

“Doesn’t matter. They want the lid kept on, so that’s how it’ll be. Nothing illegal, mind you, no sandbagging, but nothing out of the ordinary, either.”

“I’ve got to respect my client’s wishes,” she insists.

“If you truly want to do good by your client,” he advises her, “you’ll wrap this up neatly and move on. Look, Kate, if her parents and grandmother find out she’s hired a PI behind their backs, it won’t sit well with them.”

“What could they be afraid of?” she asks him.

“Something unpleasant. There are circles within circles, it’s not always clear-cut, these investigations.”

“I don’t know that?” she bridles.

“And hey, make sure everything’s by the book.” He pauses. “If by some miracle something floats to the surface—nothing should, but if it does? And it looks like it could be a law-enforcement situation? You keep me informed, hear?”

“Yeah,” she agrees reluctantly, “okay.”

She takes out notebook and pencil, a reporter’s notebook, the style that can fit into your back pocket.

“How do I get in touch with these men?” she asks.

“You’d have to go into their files for that.”

“Will you?”

He turns to her. “You’re really looking to put my ass in a sling, aren’t you?”

“I thought you were above that petty stuff, that you couldn’t be intimidated,” she taunts Herrera. “That’s okay, Juan,” she says, “I’ll get hold of that information, with or without your help.”

“Fuck.” He throws up his hands. “Me and my big mouth. I’ll do it, this one time. But then drop it, okay? For your own good.”

That’s what she loves about men, about cops, especially men cops: hit ’em in their macho and they’ll rise to the bait every time.

“No promises,” she tells him. “And I’ll be the judge of my own good.”

He sighs. “As long as I’m not implicated.”

“I said.”

“I’ll drop copies of their booking slips in the mail to you.”

“You couldn’t fax them this afternoon?” she asks, hoping. She’s double antsy now, she wants to get it on, see what’s hidden under these rocks that everybody’s trying not to show her.

He hesitates. “I’ll get them to you as quick as I can.”

“Thank you,” she says. She means it—he really is a nice guy. “Meanwhile, while I’m waiting, can you give me an address for any of them off the top of your head, even if it’s the Rescue Mission?”

“That’s as good a place to start as any, but I don’t think you’ll have any luck.”