A Good Bunch of Men Read online

  I stepped off the curb and started across the four lanes of Long Beach Boulevard.

  Bernard Carey.

  Yep, I thought, looking up and down the desolate road in the early morning hours, how could I forget that one? His girlfriend’s grandmother had stood on the porch wringing a mop, glancing at the dead boy in her front yard and going about her business as we processed the scene. That had made a lasting impression. Yeah, Bernard Carey . . . deceased, cause of death: Got caught slipping.

  The memories of Bernard Carey faded as I became aware of Floyd speaking to no one in particular, mumbling about the fleabag motel I had dragged him to and how pretty soon the sun would be up and traffic would be a bitch, and how I hadn’t bothered to feed him yet, here it was nearly daybreak.

  It took several minutes for the night clerk to answer Floyd’s persistent buzzing of the service button. A female of Middle Eastern persuasion appeared on the other side of thick glass, her round, brown eyes glazed with sleep and disinterest. “Yes?”

  I pulled the badge holder from my belt, displaying the six-point gold star, DEPUTY SHERIFF – LOS ANGELES COUNTY in gold letters against a blue background, a gold ribbon over the top: DETECTIVE.

  “Can we have a word with you?”

  She nodded in the affirmative but stood still.

  “In there?” I suggested, motioning toward the door that led to a lobby behind her.

  She slid a piece of wood to cover the small opening in the window, then turned and walked away. She reappeared moments later opening the lobby door.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  As I followed Floyd inside, I winced at the smell of body odor.

  Floyd retrieved a Polaroid picture of Susie’s face, the scarf still wrapped around her neck, one eye open, the other half-closed, death obvious even to the untrained eye. He held it out for the clerk to see. The clerk’s hand flew to her mouth, then drifted down across her chin and settled over her heart.

  “You know her?” Floyd asked.

  Her eyes remained focused on the picture, now alert and showing interest.

  Floyd’s hand shook slightly as he held the photo for her to see. “Well?”

  I wondered what his body lacked: sleep, caffeine, nicotine . . . all of the above? Maybe alcohol.

  “Yes, I know this one,” she said, her finger touching the picture.

  Floyd glanced at me, then back at the clerk. “How do you know her?”

  “Upstairs,” she said and pointed toward the ceiling, her speech thick with an accent but absent emotion. “Two-se’enteen.”

  Floyd pocketed the picture and turned for the door.

  “Could we have a key?” I asked, my hand held outward.

  “I go,” she said and walked past me. She put her hand on Floyd’s arm and nudged him toward the door. “Go, you go now.”

  Floyd looked at me and grinned, then stepped outside.

  The night clerk led the way up a gum-stained concrete stairway to the second floor. A black, wrought-iron rail enclosed the narrow walk with brown doors against tan stucco walls. Nothing stirred at the low-rent motel, not this early in the morning.

  Floyd stopped the clerk as she reached for the door, held out a hand and gestured for the key. He took it from her and put a finger over his lips, the universal sign for her to be quiet now. I motioned for her to step back, and she did.

  Floyd and I made eye contact, the only communication we would require before going through the door. Being partners off and on for the last two decades, we seemed to know what the other thought without a spoken word. He’d go in first and I’d follow, taking opposite sides of the doorway immediately inside. It didn’t matter which way he went, it would be my role to move the other direction. We didn’t view this as high risk, but we’d take a few precautions nonetheless; you never knew what you might walk into.

  We drew our weapons and held them at the sides of our legs, made eye contact one more time, and nodded. Floyd keyed the door and pushed it open. He stepped in and crouched as he moved left, his Beretta leading the way. I stepped in behind him, flanked to the opposite side of the doorway, and positioned my back against the wall. I scanned the small room over the front sight of my H&K nine-millimeter, and almost immediately stopped to focus on a human foot. It was encased in a black, high-heeled shoe and protruded from beneath a mattress that sat halfway off its frame. I glanced at Floyd and he at me, a silent communication confirming we both saw it.

  We moved silently through the room toward the bathroom, watching our step, evidence likely everywhere, our guns at the ready as we visually swept the interior. The main room was clear, and so was the bathroom. There was nobody here other than Dickie Floyd and another dead hooker.

  “I’ll call it in,” I said to Floyd, sliding my pistol into its holster on my right hip, “see if they’ll give us a fresh team out here to handle it.”

  “Christ, Dickie,” Floyd said, now stepping out of the room, “how the hell do you manage to constantly get us into this shit?”

  4

  THE MORNING SUN glistened off of the burgundy-colored Caprice’s windshield as Sandy Landers, another detective on our team, arrived at the Regal Inn. She stopped in the driveway near the office and parked the car there, partially across the sidewalk.

  “They’re killing me,” I said to Floyd, shielding my eyes from the glare.

  “Are you part vampire, Dickie?”

  “I hate the sun,” I said.

  “And the heat. And the traffic. And—”

  “My partner.”

  “—your partner. Why’re you still wearing felts if you’re so damn miserable?”

  “Protocol. Can’t switch to straws until Easter.”

  “Are there hat cops, someone who enforces these things?”

  “Easter in the spring, Labor Day in the fall. That’s when you switch, like women’s shoes.”

  “Women’s shoes?”

  “Black and white, dumbass. Women aren’t supposed to wear white after Labor Day. How does Mr. Fashion not know these things? Same thing with hats, felts in the fall and winter, straws for spring and summer. In California, it can be a bitch—”

  “Hey Sandy,” Floyd said, as she walked up on our conversation.

  “Hi Sandy,”—then to Floyd—“with how hot it can be in the fall.”

  “Hi Matt,” she replied, then she nodded at me, “Richard.”

  Sandy seemed to study us both for a moment, the mirrored shades moving from one to the other, her round little face framed by straight, black hair. This very serious lady in her cop glasses, black slacks and a burgundy blouse to match her cop car.

  When Sandy Landers first came to the bureau, I had told her to drop the formalities, telling her to call me Dickie and that Matt goes by Floyd, a nickname I had pinned on him many years before. She had locked the mirrors on me that day, new to the bureau but coming at me with the confidence of a veteran, saying, “Floyd’s an old man’s name, and Dickie is just obscene.”

  That was about two years ago and now she was breaking in a new guy. She was well liked, seemed to be a hard worker and a team player. And she was tough. Having been raised with four older brothers, she had learned to wrestle at first, and then box, all at an early age. She joined the department shortly after graduating from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor’s degree in business and a newfound love of mixed martial arts. It wasn’t uncommon for her to show up to the office with a black eye or worse.

  “Who’s your new partner?” I asked, nodding past her as the new face approached, a slender, dark-haired man slipping into a suit jacket.

  “Rick,” she said to him over her shoulder, “this is Richard Jones, one of the guys on our team.”

  “Nice to meet you, Richard,” he said, stepping over to shake my hand. “Rick Davenport.”

  “Likewise. Call me Dickie.”

  “And his partner,” Sandy nodded toward Floyd, “Matt Tyler.”

  “Welcome aboard. You can call me Floyd.”
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  “Dickie,” he said looking at me, and then at Floyd, “and Floyd?”

  “As in Pretty Boy.” I said.

  He nodded, slowly.

  “They’re both nuts,” Sandy said, holding the serious look behind her shades. “You’ll call them little as possible, if you have any good sense at all.”

  “You can lose the jacket, Rick, there won’t be any brass coming by. Plus, it’s too damned hot for a suit jacket.” I glanced at my watch. “Barely seven and it’s already what, seventy degrees?”

  Floyd stared at me for a moment through his black-framed Ray-Bans, a slight grin on his face. His thoughts were anyone’s guess. Probably something demented, sexual, or maybe violent, or some combination thereof.

  Floyd then looked at the new guy. “Where’d you come from, Rick?”

  “Gangs,” he said, “up in Lancaster.”

  “Compton North,” I said. “All the assholes they got up there now, are transplants from down here. You can thank the liberals for that. Housing and development, equal opportunity bullshit.”

  Rick Davenport stood silent, taking it in.

  Floyd picked it up: “Long as you’re not from I.A.”—pausing to spit tobacco over his left shoulder—“Last three sergeants they transferred in were all from internal affairs. Two of them had personally tried to have our asses fired a few years back, me and Dickie here. This asshole,” he said with his thumb pointed at me, “gets us in a gunfight at a shopping mall, of all places—”

  “I did not get us in a gunfight,” I said.

  “—Johnnie Cochran slaps a lawsuit on our ass, says Dickie crippled his client, shot him in the ass while he was running away. You know the kid was going to be a football star or some shit, by the time Johnnie’s told it.”

  “He turned when I fired,” I said, “is why he was shot in the ass. But you’re off the subject.”

  “Anyway,” Floyd said, “then these guys from Internal Affairs, the same assholes who tried to nail us when they were working the dark side, they come to Homicide and now they want to be our buddies.”

  “House-fairies,” I said, “is what they are. We’ve got no use for any of them.”

  “I told you they’re nuts,” Sandy said to her partner. Then she looked to me. “So, you stumbled across a murder?”

  “Sorry to dump it on you,” I said, seeing my hat in her mirrored shades, “but this would’ve been our third murder this weekend, if we kept it.”

  “Third?”

  I turned toward the motel and motioned for her to follow. “We picked up a murder-suicide yesterday out in Malibu,” I said over my shoulder, now taking the flight of stairs to the second floor, “then we were called out on a murder across the road there last night.” I looked across the street in reflection.

  “This morning,” Floyd corrected me.

  “Whatever, it was dark. Anyway, that’s how we stumbled on this one. We were following up on our case from last night—”

  “This morning.”

  “—talked to the manager here to see if she knew anything, and that led us to this room up here.”

  Sandy glanced at Floyd, then back to me. “What’d you get in Malibu?”

  I paused at the top of the stairs and looked across Long Beach Boulevard. The traffic flowed steady now, morning commuters scurrying throughout the city, north and south on Long Beach Boulevard, headed toward downtown Los Angeles or maybe the beach, or to the various schools, factories, and businesses in between. A city bus came to a stop not far from where Susie took her last breath, its brakes squealing and motor growling as it settled to a heavy stop.

  “Murder-suicide,” I said, “retired engineer decides he’s checking out, going to take the wife with him.”

  Floyd leaned on the wrought-iron handrail. “Made sport of it, the dumb bastard chasing her around the room, firing at will, if you can imagine that.”

  “The guy goes into the kitchen, points a gun at the lovely missus,” I said, “she’s just sitting there having her morning coffee, reading the paper. She looks up, can’t believe it, says, ‘What are you doing, Mel? Why, you’re not going to shoot me, are you Mel?’ But ol’ Mel don’t say shit, just lets one fly—blam!—nails her in the shoulder. She says, ‘My God, Mel, why are you shooting me?’ He doesn’t answer, just levels his piece at her again. She gets up, runs through the house and dipshit chases behind, blasting at her with his .357, pew, pew. She’s yelling, ‘Mel, why are you shooting me?’ . . . Yeah,” I said to Rick who stood shaking his head, “she asks him, ‘Why are you shooting me?’ She finally drops in the downstairs bathroom, a trail of blood from the kitchen into the dining room, through the living room, down the hall, and into the bathroom where she’s later found. This asshole goes back to his room and reloads. He gets a box of bullets from the closet—this we figured out from the evidence, she didn’t know about it—and sticks the gun in his mouth, drops the hammer, and he’s done.”

  “Right there,” Floyd said, “in the walk-in closet, brains all over his suits.”

  “Man,” Rick said.

  “How did you learn all this?” Sandy asked, sounding a bit skeptical about the details.

  “She was still alive when the deputies got there,” Floyd said, “gave them a statement on the way to the hospital.”

  “But she died?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch wants to off himself, fine,” Sandy said, “but don’t be shooting my ass too.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I hear ya.”

  Rick asked, “What set this guy off?”

  “Don’t know yet,” I said. “Everyone we’ve talked to said they were like Ozzie and Harriet, a picture of bliss. Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unreal.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “So, why’re you guys back in the rotation after catching that?” Sandy asked.

  “Ask Jordan,” Floyd said, “that’s his call.”

  “He knew Harriet Nelson bit the big one, yet he gave us this dead cross-dresser,” I said, nodding across the street.

  I paused, looking at the sidewalk, seeing Susie still there in my mind as people walked over her, unmoved by the sacred ground over which they passed. Busy with their own lives, human rats trying to thrive in a concrete cage, or maybe just get by.

  Sandy and Rick stood facing me again, waiting. I looked from one to the other. “Strangled with his scarf, is how it looks so far. No other obvious signs of trauma.”

  “Who’s your victim?” Sandy asked.

  But my mind had stayed on the crime scene. “Wait—”

  Floyd said, “What’s up, Dickie?”

  “—what time did our murder go down?”

  “Just after midnight. Or at least that’s what time someone found her, called it in.”

  “Did you notice the bus stop?”

  “No, you?”

  “No,” I said and held it for a moment. “Wonder what time the buses stop running down here.”

  “Well,” Floyd said, “I’ll just put that on our shit to do list.”

  “The victim?” Sandy asked.

  “What?”

  “I was asking who’s your victim, what do you know about him?”

  “Shane Wright,” I said, “known as Susie Q on the street.”

  “Stays in the motel?” Sandy asked.

  “Recently, yeah,” Floyd said, “at least according to the night clerk.”

  “We came over, thinking maybe our victim’s doing tricks out of the motel,” I said.

  “He is,” Sandy guessed.

  “Well, he’s staying here anyway. Night clerk knows him, so she took us up here to the room,” I said, moving farther down the balcony in the stillness of the morning, people here unaware of the time of day, no place to be anytime soon.

  “Two-seventeen,” Floyd said, pointing to the brass numbers on the door.

  “This is how we found it, other than the door was closed, and locked.” I stood at the threshold and looked through t
he familiar scene once more. Taking in the soiled and stained carpeting, burn marks and beer stains leading my eyes to the foot under the mattress. “We cleared the place, confirmed she’s dead—or maybe he?—then sealed it off and called for another team. Floyd needs a beer.”

  “Not anymore. Now I need breakfast, some coffee, then beer.”

  “You get a statement from the clerk?” Sandy asked.

  “Just some preliminary information,” I answered. “We can send Floyd back if you’d like, he loves her.”

  “She must be hot, huh?” Sandy surmised.

  “No,” I said.

  “Not hardly,” Floyd added.

  “But since when does that matter?” I added. “She’s the only one here with a dress and no—”

  “Easy,” Sandy said.

  “—coroner’s case number?”

  “Nice recovery.”

  “Okay,” I said, “we’re out of here. Call us if you need anything. Otherwise, we’ll hook up at the office tomorrow, compare notes, or maybe see you at the autopsy. We should probably work these cases together.”

  The sun rose lazily over the City of Angels, as did her citizenry, neither in a hurry on Sunday morning. Soon the roads would bustle with Angelenos scurrying toward the beaches, toward Hollywood, toward the Garment District in downtown, or maybe heading north or east to the mountains and beyond. Floyd and I drove to 1104 N. Mission Street and walked through the service entrance of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office to attend the postmortem examination of Shane Clayton Wright.

  By the time we arrived and donned our protective clothing: paper gowns, booties and skull caps—all in matching blue—latex gloves, and our county-issued respirators, and entered the autopsy room, the examination had already begun. Susie had been examined with the aid of an ultraviolet light to detect and recover any physical evidence that might exist. Samples of her hair and nails had been collected, and then she was undressed, weighed, washed, x-rayed, and wheeled into the examination room where four other autopsies were in progress.