Land of Shadows (31 page)

I laughed. “I doubt it—Crase is the wind beneath my wings. Saddle up, cowboy.”

“Right now?” He consulted his watch. “This late?”

“You turning into a pumpkin at midnight?” I stood and stretched like a cat on a carpet, flexing the tips of my toes and fingers until they cracked. “Since when do we allow potential murder suspects to catch
Letterman
? Are we in Kennebunkport or are we in South Los Angeles?”

And hell, it had been a decent enough time of day for someone—maybe even Todd—to wrap his hands around a child's neck and squeeze until she stopped living.

 

44

Todd Wisely and his family lived in Carson, sixteen miles out of downtown Los Angeles. In the 1920s, oil had been discovered in this part of Southern California. Refineries opened and job seekers and their families followed. Almost one hundred years later, Carson was still a city of oil production; a city that stank of methane, its unofficial flower; a city shrouded in sherbet-colored refinery lights and giant plumes of steam.

Only a few homes on Todd Wisely's block glowed with television light—and someone was still watching the boob tube in Todd's living room. The Wisely house was not the original tract home that had been built in the 1970s. It had been remodeled into a five-bedroom McMansion with lush plantings and a waterfall—too much this-and-that for such a small plot of land. A Bruins flag hung above the front double doors. UCLA bumper stickers had been plastered in the rear windows of the two Lexus sedans parked in the flagstone driveway.

After knocking and waiting, knocking and waiting some more, the front door opened and a draft of onions rode out to greet us. Weezy Jefferson, all bosoms, wig, and fake eyelashes, stood there wearing a blue-and-yellow tracksuit similar to the one Sunshine had described Todd wearing on Tuesday night. But Weezy knew as much about exercise and conditioning as I knew about horse husbandry in Kazakhstan. At half past eleven, she was not pleased to see two strangers standing on her porch.

I identified myself and Colin, then asked to speak with Todd.

“Todd is not here,” she said with a frown.

“And you are…?” I asked.

“His mother, Gerri Wisely.”

In the background, I heard a very excited man preach about God's plan for His children. Plants—ferns, orchids, and something carnivorous-looking—filled the foyer and beyond, crawling everywhere and sucking up all of the oxygen meant for us highfalutin homo sapiens.

“Do you know where he'd be, Mrs. Wisely?” I asked. “We've tried calling him all night but we've had no success … which is why we drove here tonight. It's very important that we speak with him immediately.”

She crossed her arms. “About?”

“The murder of his friend Monique Darson.”

“Is he a suspect?”

I held her gaze. “We'd just like to speak with him, please. We're talking to all of the victim's friends.”

She said nothing at first, just tapped the door with her fingernails. Then: “Do you show up this late to
all
of her friends' houses?” Weezy was acting hard, but her jaw muscles twitched and the left eyelash fluttered too much—fear lurked beneath her pissiness. Because
murder
? Who the hell wants
that
on their porch at almost midnight? She touched her wig with a shaky hand and the gold five-point-star ring on her finger caught the porch light.

“You're an Eastern Star?” I asked, nodding at the ring.

Her eyes lit and her chin lifted with pride. “Yes, I am.”

Yahtzee!

“My grandmother was an Eastern Star,” I said. “She was the … Who's the officer responsible for the initiations? The conductress? Yes, she did that in a chapter back in Brooklyn.” I sniffled. “Rest her soul.”

Gerri Wisely's bosom lifted to follow her chin. “I'm Worthy Matron of my chapter.”

“Oh, wow.” I dropped my eyes, all
golly, gee whiz.
“I've always been interested in joining. I have such warm feelings about Eastern Stars, you know, because of my grandmother. Before she died, though, she asked me to join. But I'm just a cop—”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Gerri Wisely the Worthy Matron said, “you're a relative, first of all, and second,
all
distinguished women are invited to apply.”

“Even a gun-slinging wretch like me?” I asked, sad-eyed.

“You
are
a detective,” she said with a soft smile. “You keep our neighborhoods and families safe from—”

Colin cleared his throat and said, “I hate to break this up—”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.” I offered Gerri Wisely an embarrassed grin. “I'm forgetting why I came to your house so late at night. And again: I apologize for the lateness.”

“Todd said he was going to a party over in Inglewood,” she shared. “At some club called Metro.”

I thanked Gerri Wisely for her help and promised that I would check out her chapter's Web site once I had a free moment.

“So the Eastern Star whatever,” Colin said as he pulled away from the curb. “Was that a lie?”

“My friend Lena's grandmother was the grandmother I never had.” I tossed him a smile. “Like my dorm-room Malcolm X poster said, ‘By any means necessary.'”

The traffic on La Brea Avenue was a delight. Cars jammed the streets—most of them filled with drunken revelers, male and female, standing in the sunroofs of their cars. A few of Inglewood's Finest had pulled over the worst offenders, but there were so many sinners—the cops' efforts were equivalent to putting out a forest fire with a baby's bottle filled with milk. Bass boomed from car stereos as some so-called rapper muttered on top of the beat, “The hat, walk with it, walk with it, The hat, get low…” Somewhere in New York, KRS-One and Chuck D were sobbing into their Fuzzy Navels and Cool Ranch Doritos.

As we got closer to Metro, more people—young women wearing booty shorts and cheap stilettos, and their male counterparts, sporting baggy shirts of color (couldn't wear white T-shirts to clubs), flooded the streets and sidewalks. A few members of a bike club revved their custom-made Harleys at the curb.

“Oh, goody,” I said. “An FFA convention.”

Colin snorted. “
Future
Felons of America? How much you wanna bet that a few of these cats are current members—”

A gray BMW 630i with black rims shot from Market Street and swerved north onto La Brea Avenue .

“That our boy?” Colin asked, speeding up to get a better view of the rear license plate.

I ran the sequence through the computer. “That's his car. Don't know if that's him behind the wheel, though.” The Bimmer's windows were blacked out. Not only could I not determine if Todd was driving, I couldn't tell whether there were other people in the car.

“This could be bad,” Colin said.

“Shit.” I grabbed the radio and requested backup just in case somebody was feeling large like Ferrigno.

At Manchester Boulevard the BMW picked up speed and shot through the red light.

I said, “Shit,” again.

Colin turned to me. “Well?”

I rubbed my forehead. “Damn it. Didn't feel like having an adventure tonight.”

Colin said, “Oh well,” then hit the siren and floored it. Off we went, also blasting through the red light, almost clipping an Altima that wouldn't move the hell out of the way.

The Bimmer was now traveling at least sixty miles per hour in a thirty-five.

“We don't want him going down the hill,” I said.

La Brea Avenue northbound cut between Baldwin Hills and Kenneth Hahn park. It was a twisty son-of-a-gun, one of those Autobahn stretches of road where a car could get away from you, flip, bang, and kill you dead.

Colin sped up. “Thinks he knows we want him to stop?”

The Bimmer cut a quick right into a gas station but didn't stop. It then sped out of the station, cracked a nearby bus stop bench, made a left, and roared west on Slauson Avenue.

“I think he knows,” I said.

Two patrol cars, sirens blasting, lights swirling like crazy, joined the chase.

My heart pounded—I rarely participated in car pursuits now, and I wondered how this one would end. I thanked God that I wore Kevlar today, and for the first time in a long time was grateful for the vest's pinching at my hip—it was very possible that whoever sat behind that steering wheel wanted to die by cop tonight.

The BMW swerved into the parking lot shared by a McDonald's and a Home Depot.

A second later, Colin also jammed into the lot.

The BMW screeched to a stop near the store's entrance.

Colin and I hopped out of the Crown Vic, guns drawn and trained on the Bimmer's driver's-side door.

The officers in the two patrol cars—two Hispanics, two blacks, none of them acquaintances of mine since they worked graveyard—also had their weapons drawn.

“Get out of the car!” Colin yelled. “Get out of the car
now
!”

Nothing.

Sweat rolled down my temples and my back.
Please God, let this be quick and bloodless
. I grabbed the car's PA system microphone and said, “Open the door. Step out of the car. Hands out so that I can see them. Do it
now
!”

Nothing happened.

I repeated my order.

A moment later, the driver's-side door swung open and the noise of T-Pain's autotuned crap rode out on acrid smoke.

I smelled it from where I stood. “He hot-boxin' in there?”

“Yep,” Colin said. “I'm gettin' a contact way back here.”

A long leg clad in denim left the car and a $200 Air Jordan landed on the asphalt. A long arm, the wrist shiny with a Rolex and a thick gold bracelet, hung in the air. The rest of Todd Wisely followed. He slowly placed his large hands on the top of his baseball cap–covered head.

“Anybody else in the car?” I asked over the mike.

“No,” Todd Wisely shouted.

Officer Two crept toward the passenger-side window. With one quick move, he opened the door and pointed his revolver into the darkness. “Clear,” he shouted.

Todd Wisely snickered. “Y'all fucked with the wrong—”

Officer Number Three did the honors—he spun the big baller around, wrangled one large hand and then the other behind his back.

And T-Pain said, “Yeah, god damn, you think you're cool, you think I'm not—you think you tough…”

 

Saturday, June 22

 

45

I gaped at the handcuffed ballplayer seated across from me. Not because he was a wonder to behold. No, unfortunately. Beneath the fancy clothes and diamond stud earring, Todd Wisely was an average-looking kid with skin the color of a Hershey's kiss, lips darkened from smoking shit on his downtime, and high cheekbones courtesy of some Native American great-great-grand-something. His eyes were rheumy, the whites the color of rhubarb. He had that combative tilt to his chin, that swagger anyone could master if he watched Season One of
The Wire
. Height—six-foot-six—was the only gee-whiz thing about Todd Wisely.

But if anyone owned a Gucci belt, it would have been this kid. And until today, my handcuffs had never brushed against a genuine Rolex.

“You're telling me…” Awed, I shook my head. “You ran from us cuz you was ridin' dirty?”

“Yup.” He crossed his long legs, then uncrossed them.

“Not cuz you killed Monie.”

“Yup.” He was staring at something behind me, maybe a rainbow or perhaps a unicorn.

I turned in my chair—hell, I had waited all of my life to see a unicorn. But there was nothing behind me except a dirty wall. Facing him again, I said, “Why can't you look me in the eye, Todd?”

He folded his arms and intentionally held my gaze. “I'm lookin'.”

“You're displaying defensive behavior,” I said. “What do you have to be defensive about? This ain't a TV show and you ain't Stringer Bell, so stop with the bad-ass-thug routine. You're from
Carson
, son.”

No response, and so we sat there in silence. Forty seconds later, he said, “Ma'am, I didn't kill Monie. I was in Vegas on Tuesday night.”

“You got proof?”

He smirked. “My word is bond.”

“Your word is turd. Show me a receipt or stop with that noise.”

“I don't have a receipt on me,” he said. “Let me go home and I'll find you one.”

I waved my hand. “Let's move on to tonight's never-ending game of
Pole Position
.”

“You didn't have to chase me.”

“You didn't have to run. We just wanted to talk to you and now look.” I ticked off fingers: “Vandalism, reckless driving, failure to stop … You fucked up, my friend.”

“Whatever. I didn't kill Monie.”

“When was the last time you talked to her?”

He shrugged. “Don't know.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Come on, Todd.”

He shook his head. “We weren't a couple. I didn't call and check in with her like she was my girl, cuz she wasn't.”

“Fine. Where were you late Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning?”

“Like I said: I was in Vegas at the craps table in the Venetian.”

I sighed. “So if you were in Vegas and didn't kill Monique Darson, why did you run from us tonight?”

He glared at me. “Already told you.” His high was quickly fading and he was becoming prickly. “Why you keep asking me that?”

“
Because
,” I shouted, standing up, “you don't seem to be pissed off enough with what I'm accusing you of.”

“I don't?”

“If someone accused
me
of murder, well, I'd be shouting and banging my fists against the walls, acting like a crazy woman cuz I. Didn't.
Do.
It.” I held out my arms and shook my head. “But you … You're sittin' here in the cut, like I just accused you of nibbling too many grapes in the produce section.”