The Program: A Dickie Floyd Detective Novel Read online

  THE PROGRAM

  A DICKIE FLOYD DETECTIVE NOVEL

  DANNY R. SMITH

  Copyright © 2022 by Danny R. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7349794-8-0

  Cover by Jon Schuler

  www.schulercreativelab.com

  Created with Vellum

  For Hudsy and Baby G

  CONTENTS

  Reviews

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Preview of Nothing Left to Prove

  Also by Danny R. Smith

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  Book Reviews

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “Nothing less than brilliant storytelling!” — Frederick Douglass Reynolds, author of Black, White, and Gray All Over: A Black Man’s Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement

  “Another outstanding work from the author of the Dickie Floyd novels.” — Kay Reeves

  “Danny R. Smith has woven the ideal story once again, filled with characters who jump off the page and into your heart. Outstanding! Very Highly Recommended.” — Michele Kapugi

  “Smith outdid himself! His in-depth development of Josie in this episode of the franchise really made this book enjoyable.” — Jeff Schauer

  “One of those books you can’t wait to finish and makes you angry when you’re done.” — Dennis Slocumb

  “Best book I’ve read in the past several years.” — Bud Johnson

  “Few writers can take you into the minds of police and criminals. None do so as well as Danny R. Smith.” — Phil Jonas

  PROLOGUE

  The first time Rudy Prada found Jesus happened shortly after he’d walked into Angel’s Market on Third Street in East Los Angeles, two blocks from King Taco and a half mile west of the sheriff’s station, a gun in his jacket pocket.

  His day had started just before noon when his girlfriend, Veronica “Vero” Lara, stuck the barrel of a snub-nose .38 against his cheek and interrogated him about a hoochie mama named Sylvia, having found her name and number scrawled on a cocktail napkin in purple ink and tucked into his jacket pocket, along with the blued-steel heater she’d used to nudge him from his slumber. Rudy, handsome and silver-tongued—irresistible to ladies who favored soft-core bad boys—had assured Vero that his homeboy Mikey had worn his jacket the night before and that both the gun and the hoodrat’s number were his. Then he made love to her, retrieved his gun, and left the house. He walked to the nearby King Taco where he picked up an order of tacos al pastor and ate them as he meandered down the sidewalk on his way to the liquor store where he would pick up a can of beer to wash them down. At the register, Rudy dug into his jacket pocket for his cash, and as he brought out the bills, the .38 fell out. The Korean woman behind the counter, who, along with her husband, had purchased the store from Angel Gutierrez two years prior, panicked. She hit the silent alarm to signal a robbery-in-progress, but then she had no idea how to undo the chain of events she had set in motion after Rudy picked up the gun, put it back in his pocket, apologized, and paid for his beer. He was standing outside the liquor store, basking in the early afternoon winter sun, and drinking his beer, when a sheriff’s patrol car came around the corner and veered toward him. He shoved the beer into his jacket pocket, hoping to avoid being harassed for an open container, as the lady cop came out of the car with her pistol pointed directly at him, the woman yelling for him to show her his hands.

  Rudy did as he had been ordered and removed his hands from his pockets, his right hand still grasping the can of beer. The lady cop fired two shots, and one of them tore through the M of the arched Maravilla tattoo on his stomach. He dropped his beer as he fell to the ground, clutching his jacket against the burning pain and crying out, asking why she had shot him.

  It was in the ambulance on the way to White Memorial when Rudy reflected on his Catholic upbringing. He pictured the mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe amid other symbols of Latino culture, the canvas a wall against which he had stood until the gunshot dropped him to the cool concrete sidewalk now stained a crimson red. The bumps in the road felt like hammer strikes against his abdomen, but he focused on the image of Guadalupe and silently said a prayer he hadn’t said in more than a decade: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…

  The next time Rudy came to know Christ, he was coming to terms with the third step at a court-ordered AA meeting which took place in a nondescript windowless room with a worn tiled floor and plastic chairs, two folding tables at the back holding urns of coffee and stacks of Styrofoam cups, a podium at the front. He was contemplating this idea of turning over his will and his life to the care of God—as he understood Him—and reflecting on the meandering path of his adult life thus far. It had been fifteen years since he was shot and did a nickel for being in possession of a stolen firearm, in spite of his protests that the gun he had possessed at the time wasn’t his. While doing his time, first at the county and then at several state pens once he was convicted: Chino, Avenal, and Delano, Rudy held jobs and attended religious services and avoided the politics of gangs to the extent that he could. After all, he represented a neighborhood, and certain things were expected of him because of it, so he carefully negotiated those obstacles and did his time as well as time could be done by a vato from East L.A.

  But he left Jesus behind along with his bed roll and toothbrush when he returned to the old neighborhood a veterano, a vato who had been to the pen. He strutted with a little more confidence and would lock eyes with youngsters until they turned away, posturing for the other OGs in the hood. Three months later, he walked into Angel’s once more, this time actually intending to commit an armed robbery when he purposefully pulled a gun from his jacket while standing at the register. It had only taken a six-pack of beer, a few huffs of paint, and Mikey’s prodding for him to decide that revenge against the Koreans was in order. This time, it was Rudy who got off two shots, striking the man in the store who had grabbed his own pistol rather than emptying the till as he had been ordered to do. Rudy couldn’t believe it, being forced to shoot a man when he only wanted retribution for the gunshot he had received and the time he had served thanks to Mrs. Yang, or whatever her name was, her and
the lady deputy who put a hole in his gut.

  Two days later, the same lady cop who had shot him five years earlier woke him at seven o’clock with the muzzle of her pistol pointed at his face. The Mexican cop with the steely brown eyes stood over him as he lay naked in Vero’s bed, a thin sheet barely covering his lower body, children crying in an adjacent room. Frozen with fear, he stared at the muzzle of her gun, likely the same one he had seen before, the one that appeared regularly in his mind, slow motion replays of balls of fire and a cloud of smoke and a searing pain enveloping his body as he fell to the ground with a can of beer in his hand.

  There were others crowded into the cluttered room, five or six men, presumably detectives from East L.A. station. Like the woman cop, each was dressed in jeans and green jackets with sheriff’s insignia on the fronts and backs, gun belts around their waists. Rudy couldn’t take his eyes off the beautiful cop who had tried to kill him once before, and he waited for the last flash of light he would ever see.

  But the flash never came.

  The lady cop holstered her gun and turned away as two male cops grabbed Rudy, flipped him onto his bullet-scarred stomach with the tattoo that looked like a spot of melted wax and then the word, aravilla. The cops handcuffed him, and someone told Vero to put his pants on him. Rudy went to jail bare-chested and trying his best to keep a pair of baggy chinos from falling off his narrow hips.

  In court, the Latina cop had held his gaze while testifying that Rudy had been identified by the victim and a witness as being the one to shoot the store owner while attempting to rob him, and yes, she admitted, during a contentious cross-examination, it was in fact she who had shot the defendant five years earlier outside of the very store he now stood accused of robbing. It was irrelevant, the judge declared, and the jury apparently agreed.

  Rudy got a dime plus a second strike for that one, so when he was paroled nine years later, he left Mikey and Maravilla behind, and he moved Vero and her three children–one of whom was his own—to La Mirada. It was a different world than East L.A. though only a half-hour drive down the Santa Ana freeway. He found work through an outreach program where former gangbangers spent time in the neighborhoods and at the schools and parks and social services offices talking to at-risk youth. He would tell them about being shot, about his time in the pen, how his first stint had been easier than the last when he leveled up and split his time at the maximum-security institutions of Corcoran and Pelican Bay, and that the only thing that got him through was his program that included God and sobriety and a separation from the life of gangs in which he had been raised.

  He shared these same testaments at his weekly AA meeting in the city of Norwalk, where Rudy was popular among his peers. He was a handsome convict with an easy smile and the tongue of a practiced politician who was comfortable at the podium speaking of his trials and tribulations, his daily struggles, his past sins, and his ongoing efforts to make amends for them.

  And it was during one such revelation that, as he scanned the room, careful to make eye contact with each attendee, his mind went blank and his speech suddenly halted as his eyes met the familiar gaze of a woman watching him from the back. She lowered her head and raised a Styrofoam cup in front of her face, and for the remainder of his talk she remained hidden behind her coffee and a purposefully draped lock of hair.

  But Rudy had known her at first glance—there was no mistake about it. He could never forget those almond-shaped hazel eyes, the eyes of an outlaw befittingly set on a particularly formidable lady cop.

  1

  Detective Josefina Sanchez whirled into the courtroom, pushing through the swinging door with her backside, an overstuffed brown expanding folder tucked beneath one arm, a briefcase dangling from the opposite hand. Written across the top left flap of the folder was Murder, 187 P.C., and beneath it were the names of the victim, Trinidad Flores, and the suspect—now the defendant—Fernando Belmontes. All were neatly printed in black felt marker along with an L.A. County sheriff’s file number and the coroner’s case number. The folder comprised reports, notes, typewritten statements, and envelopes containing crime scene photographs—everything she might need during the trial. She glanced at the clock on the wall as she made her way to the prosecution table and saw she was fifteen minutes late. Not bad, considering.

  Josie had been called to testify yesterday afternoon, but hadn’t been excused from the witness stand by the court’s final recess of the day. She didn’t expect her testimony this morning to take long, but you never knew. In any event, she had planned to arrive early and go over yesterday’s testimony with the prosecutor, Justin McKnight, who had glanced back at her as she came through the door and then turned back to the table where he now sat rocking in his chair and tapping his pen on a yellow legal pad before him. Was he irritated at her for being late? She didn't know. She did know that nearly everyone else in the courtroom was looking at her as she now pushed through the swinging half doors that separated the spectators from the business side of the courtroom, namely the judge, his clerk, the bailiff, a jury box, and two tables for the attorneys. Thankfully, the jury box sat empty. You always wanted the jurors to regard you warmly, and scurrying in late could leave any one of them with the wrong impression.

  Department 103 was one of infamy, host of one of the most appalling trials of all time. Situated on the ninth floor of the Los Angeles County Superior Courthouse at 210 West Temple Street in downtown Los Angeles, the large chamber was finished in light-colored wood-paneled walls which were accented by dark wood trim that matched the counsel tables and the benches where the spectators sat. Today, a smattering of spectators was comfortably spread out, with plenty of room for others. This was no O.J. crowd, no reporters and none of the lottery winners or others who had paid for their seats in this very chamber a quarter of a century ago. Josie’s case stood in stark contrast to that fiasco—just a regular murder trial with nothing famous about it. One man had killed another outside a barroom in East Los Angeles, and few people other than Josie, her partner Dickie, and a handful of the victim’s family even cared.

  Josie bent down and whispered in the deputy district attorney’s ear as she set her file on the counsel table and placed her briefcase on an empty chair. “Sorry I’m late. Rollover accident on the I-5.”

  She looked up to see the judge focused on his clerk. “Bring in the jury.” Then he dropped his chin and looked over a pair of specs that hung at the end of his nose, conveying irritation as he met Josie’s gaze. “Detective, you may return to the witness stand, mindful that you are still under oath,” he said, gesturing toward the seat in case she had somehow forgotten where it was.

  As she made her way to the witness stand, Josie felt her temperature rise, a not-so-unusual physiological response to the spotlight being cast on her. From childhood, she would squirm and perspire as she anticipated having to stand before her peers, and her fear of audiences hadn’t subsided. Even briefing cases in front of her colleagues at the bureau caused her anxiety. But testifying was usually different for her. She was always well-prepared for her testimony, and she looked forward to fielding questions from the attorneys. For whatever reason, the number of spectators or even cameras in the courtroom didn’t matter—this was a phenomenon she hadn’t quite figured out. But today, suddenly, she flushed under the watchful eye of the scholarly, black-robed African American at the bench, the presiding magistrate who had replaced the disgraced Judge Ito not long after a killer walked free through the very doors Sanchez had crashed through moments before. She took her seat and adjusted the microphone, placed her expandable case file folder on the floor next to her seat, then nudged it a bit out of the way with the toe of her chestnut knee-high Dolce Vita boot. As the jurors settled into their seats, she adjusted her sienna floral Armani knockoff, smoothing the ruffled midi dress and assuring it dropped over her knees and met the top of her boots. With a stoic gaze set on the back of the courtroom, she took slow, deep breaths to calm herself after her frenzied entry. What she n
eeded most was a few slow-pitch questions to allow her time to settle, but that wasn’t to be, and she knew it. Her testimony would resume this morning with defense counsel coming at her after a night of preparing to damage her credibility with the jurors.

  Just as Josie relaxed, she felt an itch on her leg beneath the top of her right boot. She calmly reached down to scratch it when a terrible thought entered her mind. Suddenly she was no longer calm and collected as she recalled a crime scene with maggots crawling all over the floor while she and her partner examined a bloated and rotted corpse. She had worn these same boots that day, and hours later, while interviewing a suspect at the station, she had a similar sensation and convinced herself that one or more of the maggots had made its way up her leg and into her boot. The more she had tried to ignore it, the worse the sensation had become, and Josie could see in her mind the tiny white larva crawling out of her boot and up her leg and… Her partner had brought the heat to the suspect, the interview having moved into interrogation territory, and any disruption of the flow would have destroyed their best—and likely their only—opportunity to get a confession. So she had willed herself to hold it together, to stay composed, to accept that she only had an itch, and there was no way maggots were in her boot or on her leg. Now she just needed to reaffirm that to herself. No maggots. No maggots…