Mack wasn’t supposed to be talking to me at all, not with Homicide on the way. He thought if he broke me down, there would be something in it for him.
“What kind of gun is it and who’s it registered to?”
Mack gave a little squirm as he tried to decide if it was worth giving it up. He knew it was a major interrogation point. He weighed the pros and cons.
I gave him a little nudge. “You give me something, I’ll give you something.”
“It’s an H&K .40-cal registered to Jonathon Kendrick.”
He said the name of the registered owner with emphasis like it was supposed to mean something. It did. Back in the far recesses of my brain, I knew the name, only couldn’t pull it up. It was there and vitally important, and I couldn’t pull it up. The anger made it worse. I tried to relax. It would come to me later. I knew the way my mind worked. In similar instances, out of a dead sleep, I’d sit up in bed as the answer bubbled to the surface. I needed it right away. This information was critical to what was happening now. This time he had not mentioned the kids. Why had he not thrown them into the pot to raise the stakes? Maybe he thought too many charges would spook me into silence. Why muddy the water anymore than it was. Ned Bressler, the perfect patsy nobody would miss.
“I gave you something. Now hold up your end.”
“Kendrick? Who’s Kendrick?”
“No. You said you’d give me something.”
I needed some extra time. I needed out. Like Dad always said, never depend on anyone except yourself. And the only way to help myself was to create a little wiggle room.
I looked at Mack and said, “It’s Tuesday, isn’t it? I need to take a piss.”
Mack looked as if I’d slapped him in the face. He sat back, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Being an active member of the BMFs was like being in a street gang but only more organized. Robby Wicks was the leader, the brain of the operation who thought way out ahead of everyone else. For instance, if you were on the prowl poaching in LAPD’s area, in their low-income public housing projects, which was strictly forbidden by the sheriff’s executive staff because, “LAPD can patrol their own shitholes,” and the “shit went south,” Robby had a remedy already in place.
If while in the projects, by an unlucky circumstance you became separated from your partner before you had time to confer on your fabricated probable cause, Robby’s rule was simple. When asked, “why the hell were you in the projects?” you’d consider the date. On odd days you followed a blue Chevy with gang members into the projects, and on even days it was a green Ford. Once inside, something else diverted your attention. Your partner would say the same.
It wasn’t really Tuesday, and I really didn’t need to take a piss. The words were another code for the BMFs. It meant something critical had just come up. Either out in the field with an informant, in an interview with a crook, or while relating an incident to a boss, an incident with fabricated evidence that wasn’t coming out right once exposed to the light of day. The words were an absolute code red. Cease and desist until another meeting could be reconvened to straighten it out. I was no longer a member of the elite squad and had no reason to believe Mack would honor it.
I added, “Seriously, no bullshit, you need to hear this.”
Mack didn’t look to the right up at the camera where his captain was watching from the other room. Mack fought the urge, and I gave him a lot of credit for it. He didn’t know what to do.
The decision was taken out of his hands. The door opened and Homicide came in, a man and woman I had never seen before. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had nine thousand deputies. I had been out of circulation for three years. A lot could happen to an agency that size in three years: transfers, promotions, retirements, terminations.
The woman, a thin, bottle redhead, dressed in a nice black pantsuit that reeked of nicotine, said to Mack, “Thanks, Detective, we can take it from here.” She shot him a put-on smile that really meant she was beyond angry for polluting her ripened interrogation subject and it would be addressed later.
Mack stared into my eyes as he got up and left.
The woman had the lead. She sat down with a notebook, held out a red box of Marlboros. “Cigarette?” It was strictly forbidden to smoke in a county building. This was another interrogation ploy, an infraction violation, that said, “See, I’m like you, I break the law.” A minor violation in comparison, but it does work. And when you were talking about a case as large and as important as this one, you tried everything.
I stared at her and didn’t say anything. She kept the phony smile, pulled a cigarette out of the box with her subdued red lipstick lips, but didn’t light it. “So,” she said, her eyes slightly pinned as if she had lit the cigarette and the smoke now wafted up, “I understand you’ve waived your rights.”
I weighed my options: talk to this woman and make a deal or wait to see if Mack had the guts to talk to me later.
When I didn’t immediately say anything, she said to her partner, a bleary-eyed red-faced man in an immaculate navy-blue suit, “John, Mr. Johnson looks uncomfortable. I think we can take the cuffs off, don’t you?”
Her partner got up to take off the cuffs.
“Bruno, you mind if I call you Bruno? My name is Nancy Thorne, and I think you know why I’m here.”
I rubbed my wrists and made my choice. “I would like to talk to an attorney.”
There was no rush in making a deal. I could always do that later.
The sheriff long ago learned to take special care of sensational prisoners. You didn’t put them in general population where another inmate with a yen for fame, a wannabe who had the desire to make a name for himself, could put a shiv between your celebrity’s ribs. There was a place in the jail called Administrative Segregation. The inmates wore green jumpsuits instead of standard blues and were labeled “Keep Aways, Escort Only.” I wasn’t put in Ad Seg because classification labeled me based on my alleged crimes. They’d booked me for everything, the torch murders, the kidnapping, and the train robberies. They threw all the charges up against the wall to see what would stick. Can’t say I wouldn’t have done any different under the circumstances. Homicide Detective Thorne and her crew had forty-eight hours to file the charges.
The jail considered me a suicide risk. I was put on the third-floor hospital in a single room with a fifteen-minute observation. This meant a deputy came by every fifteen minutes and looked in the little square window in the hard steel door to confirm I was still breathing and log that fact on the chart.
Maybe I should’ve been suicidal, but this whole thing was too pat and obviously set up on the fly. I knew, if given the chance, there was an outside possibility I could tear it down. What didn’t make sense was that Robby was smarter than all this. He had to know his house of cards would take a nosedive.
I waited for hours, counting the time off in fifteen-minute increments each time I saw the on-duty deputy put his face in the window of the door. I paced the small room and tried to stay awake by counting how many looky-loos came to my window, besides the on-duty deputy. The others wanted in to see the serial killer who was lighting people on fire, the man splashed across the TV and Los Angeles Times. Jail personnel, hospital staff, trustees, all came and looked in the zoo window. Gradually, the adrenaline bled off. Four hours passed. I laid down on the bed, curled up, fought sleep, prayed that the door would open, and Mack would be there. Ironically, I now depended upon him to save me.
My eyes grew heavy. The light went off and then strobed every fifteen minutes in my semidream state.