Money Men (10 page)

A tiny peephole was opened by a young woman. "Pleach isn't here," she said.

Carr held up his badge. "Open the door, Vikki."

The face disappeared from the peephole. Carr stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. There was the sound of running, the back door opening, a struggle.

"Let me go!" Vikki screamed. "You're breaking my arm! You pig! Put me down!"

The screaming came toward the front door. The door was unlocked. Kelley opened the door, carrying the struggling Vikki under one arm like a calf. His other hand held a black plastic garbage bag with something in it. He handed Carr the plastic bag. It was closed with a piece of string. "She tossed this in the yard. I grabbed her before she went back in."

Carr pulled off the string and opened the bag. The money was in rubber-banded stacks. He guessed the counterfeit twenties at forty to fifty thousand worth.

Kelly sat the pale Vikki down in a bean-bag chair and began looking around the house. She was in a housecoat. Her shroud of thick dishwater hair was near waist length and caused her facial features to appear tiny. She had bony hands.

Carr sat on the couch facing a wall papered with a blown-up photo of Leach and Vikki standing in front of a Cadillac in silly poses. There was a stereo system on shelves and on another wall. The room had the scent of marijuana and dirty clothes.

Carr rested the plastic bag on his lap and read the "Warning of Rights" card out loud.

Vikki stared at the floor,

"Do you understand your rights?" he asked, putting the card back in his coat pocket.

"I've been arrested twelve times. What do you think?"

"Are you willing to answer a few questions for me, Vikki?"

She wrapped hair around a finger, pulled, and let it pop back. She looked at her lap. "I guess."

Carr patted the plastic bag. "Who has Pleach been peddling this to?"

"I don't know what's in the bag."

"Then why did you throw it out the back door?"

"I don't know why. I just got scared."

"Pleach is in jail," Carr said.

"For what?" She looked up.

"For delivering some of the twenties out of this bag. He was setting up a buy."

Vikki sat up straight and folded her arms across her chest. "Pleach is my old man. I ain't going to say anything to hurt him. He's been good to me."

Carr sat for a while checking the serial numbers on the counterfeit money.

A tear rolled down Vikki's cheek.

"How old are you, Vikki?" Carr asked.

"Twenty-two." Her voice cracked.

"Any children?"

Vikki turned toward him and finger-rolled some hair. "A three-year-old boy. He's with my mother because he's hyperactive. My mom didn't like my ex-old man, so she keeps him. He's really wild. It's my first husband's fault."

"What was your first husband like?"

"He used to go berserk," she said.

"How do you mean?"

"Like one time when I was out with the girls and when I came home he jumped up and threw a fishbowl at me, and it broke and all the fish were jumping around on the floor and he was grabbing my hair and hitting my head on the sink. He was bad news. He cut his hand on the fishbowl and started wiping the blood on the walls and everything."

"What happened then?"

Vikki wiped her nose with her thumb and index finger.

"I called the cops. They came and arrested him, and to get back at me he told them there was grass in the cupboard and the cops arrested me, too. I tried to make a phone call to my mom, and the cop grabbed the phone out of my hand and handcuffed my hands behind me, and I was in my housecoat and it was open in front. It was really bad news. It was really gross." She released a finger roll of hair. It sprung back to her head like a rubber band.

"When did you meet Pleach?"

"About six months ago. He was a friend of my ex-old man. The second one."

"Does Pleach score for you?"

Vikki extended her track-marked right arm. She rubbed one of the scabs as if the arm was not attached to her body.

"Yes. But I'm not saying anything else. Pleach is my old man. He told me he'd kill me if I ever snitched. Once he knocked me out. He slugged me in the jaw with all his might and knocked me out, but he didn't mean to..."

"Pleach didn't stand up for you today, Vikki. Why do you think we came here?"

"I'm not going to say anything against my old man." Vikki stared at her scarred arm.

Kelly walked back into the living room and began flipping up sofa cushions.

Carr sauntered into the kitchen area and opened cupboards.

Kelly's tone was disinterested. "When's the last time you fixed?" he said.

"'Bout twelve hours ago."

"How do you feel?"

"I don't feel good. I might have to throw up."

"You'll have plenty of time to throw up in jail tonight. It'll give you something to do." Kelly chuckled.

"You're really cold, man," Vikki whimpered.

Having checked the drawers and cupboards, Carr stepped into the bedroom. An unmade waterbed in a sea of dirty clothes and shoes. He waded through the clothes and opened the window. It didn't help the smell.

The dresser drawers were overflowing with a mixture of clean and dirty clothing. Under a pile of socks he found a stack of Polaroid photos. One was of a naked Vikki spread-eagled on the slimy bed, her hype's arms outstretched. Another showed her inserting a pink rubber dildo. Her expression was passive. He put the photos back under the socks.

In the next drawer down was a well-worn address book. He pulled it out of the drawer and looked under R. No Ronnie. He read every page. No one with the first name Ronnie. He put the book in his coat pocket and walked back into the kitchen.

Vikki was sobbing uncontrollably, her hands over her face.

Kelly looked toward the kitchen and winked.

Carr went back into the living room and sat down next to Vikki. She looked up.

"Can I get you a drink of water, Vikki?"

Vikki shook her head no. She wiped her nose with her hands.

"I wouldn't expect you to answer any questions about Pleach if he had stood up for you, but he didn't. He handed you up."

"You're just trying to trick me into talking. I don't know anything. I don't like that other guy. He's a real prick." She pointed at Kelly. "Pleach has been good to me. He respects me as a person. "

"He doesn't respect you as a person."

"How do you know?" Vikki whined.

Carr stood up and walked to the stereo-system wall unit. He took the cassette tape from his shirt pocket and popped it into the tape player. He fiddled with the dials and turned up the volume to loudspeaker quality,

"If Vikki's there with the stash, she gets arrested. Do you want to get her involved?"

"What the fuck do I care? She's just a dumb hype bitch. A friend of mine gave her to me.
 
If you go there and find counterfeit money, it's hers, not mine."

Carr turned off the tape player and removed the cassette. He put it in his coat pocket and sat down next to Vikki again.

Her expression was the same as in the Polaroid photographs.

Kelly rambled through the bedroom, slamming drawers.

Vikki began to cry again. "I want to see my little boy."

"Who did Pleach give some of the counterfeit money to?" Carr said.

"Nobody. He was holding the stash for a printer who went to the pen. He didn't want to pass the money because the Feds had the serial numbers. That's all I know. How much time am I going to get? The bag is Pleach's. Not mine. Honest to God." A tear rolled off the end of her nose and landed on the front of her housecoat.

"Think back, Vikki. Did he give even one or two of the twenties to anyone?" Carr's voice was soothing, soft.

"He gave a couple of them to a red-haired guy. 'Bout fifty years old, balding. He came over a few days ago. Told Pleach he needed a couple of the bills for a scam or something. I was in the kitchen, and I heard them talking."

"What kind of a scam?" Carr leaned closer.

"He didn't say, and Pleach didn't ask."

"What was the man's name?"

"Red. That's what Pleach called him. That's all I know. Honest to God."

"Does Pleach know anybody named Ronnie?"

"Not that I know of." Vikki grabbed her stomach. "I think I have to throw up...right now." Carr followed her to the bathroom. She gagged and wretched into the sink violently.

"The mating call of the hype," Kelly said.

Carr leaned against the bathroom doorjamb.

"We might have just run out of luck," Carr said,

"What?"

"She says the only bills went to somebody named Red. That's all she knows. I believe her."

"Unless we can come up with a 'Red,' we're at the end of the road," Kelly said.

Carr nodded.

****

TEN

At the East L.A. County women's jail, Carr had written "Possession of Counterfeit Notes-Federal Arraignment" on Vikki's booking sheet while Kelly had squirted her vomit off the back seat of the G-car with a garden hose.

After finishing the usual booking procedures, Carr phoned Delgado and filled him in. It was 9:30 P.M.

On the way to the field office, Kelly stopped at a taco stand on Brooklyn Avenue.

They got out of the car and walked to the painted hut. GOMEZ BROS TACOS CARNITAS. A freckled face came to the window and asked for their order in Spanish. Carr and Kelly looked at one another before ordering. The taco man had red hair and was balding. Carr shook his
head. It
had been a week since Rico had been killed and there still were no real leads. He knew as well as any cop that the longer the investigation took the less chance there was for success. Kelly ate five tacos with extra sauce, and they headed for the field office.

Delgado was waiting in the records room, sitting at a long table covered with stacks of five-by-eight arrest cards, Styrofoam coffee cups, and dirty ashtrays.

"The guys that pulled this caper had to know about how a counterfeit deal is done," Delgado said. "I think it's best if we go through the arrest cards, starting at the most current, and work backward. I've got people at LAPD records checking for the same thing. The arrest card has the color of hair and the date of birth." Delgado picked up a stack of cards and began thumbing through them.

The cards of red-haired men began to pile up in the middle of the table as the night wore on. By 3:30 A.M. they had compiled one hundred forty-six arrest forms of persons fitting the general description. Kelly, using a clerk's push cart, pulled the one-hundred forty-six arrest packages from file drawers, and the three agents dug out photographs of each man, tossing them into a pile.