Cold Hit (14 page)

Chapter
20

Zack was standing with his back to the window. He looked awful. Bloodshot eyes, purple nose, saffron cheeks. His swollen jowls were flush with the tropical colors of sunset. Making it worse, he was holding forth in front of six detectives on the worthlessness of task forces. "You bunch a ass-wipes couldn't find dog shit at the pound."

I walked over and grabbed him by the elbow. "Hey, Zack, come here. I need to show you something."

He pulled away. "Juss' splainin' what lame shit this is," he slurred.

Agent Orange was only a few minutes behind me. If he saw Zack in this condition it was over. But my partner was a big man who wasn't easy to corral under normal circumstances. Drunk, he was impossible. So I screwed my heels into the floor and let him have my best right cross. He wasn't expecting it and at the last second, turned into the punch. The sound bounced off the walls in the squad room, cracking like a leather bullwhip.

Zack fell forward, landing across somebody's new window desk, scattering pencils, pictures and a charging cell phone. He was stunned, but not out. I reached around behind my back, grabbed the cuffs off my belt, and slipped them on his bandaged wrists. Then, with a throbbing right hand, I straightened hi
m u
p. A line of bloody drool was coming out of the corner of his mouth. These last few days had taken a heavy toll. I'd just added to the mess by splitting his lip.

I turned to the room full of startled cops wearing various expressions of jaw dropping disbelief.

"This guy is a vet with an outstanding record. I'm begging you people to forget what you just saw. He's going through a rough time. A divorce, a bankruptcy . . . cut him some slack."

I helped Zack to his feet.

"Why'd ya hit me, man?" he mumbled.

"To shut you up. Come on, we got people to see." "Wha' people?"

I led him out of the temporary task force area into the bathroom across from the elevator, getting him inside just seconds before I heard Agent Orange in the lobby. I leaned Zack against the sink, his hands still cuffed behind him. Then I wet some paper towels and held them up to the fresh cut on his lip.

"You gotta get outta here, Zack. Don't come back till you're sober."

"'S my new unit," he said dully. "Don't wanta get gigged on some bullshit nonperformance write-up."

"You're drunk. The fed running this detail's a total nutsack."

"Don't wanta stay at my place, can't stay at Fran's or my brother's. Hadda borrow his Harley. Fucker 'said he's gonna report it stolen."

"Zack, will you shut up and come with me?" "Get these damn cuffs off," he finally said, softly.

I reached around and unhooked them with my key. "Where we going?"

"To throw ourselves on the mercy of the sixth floor. His big Irish face creased into a frown.

I found my wife in her office and left Zack sitting outside, breathing scotch on her assistant, Ellen.

"What is it?" Alexa said, looking up at me as I came through the door.

She was going over the monthly crime reports for the five detective bureaus. It was not an encouraging picture. Violent crime categories were up and clearance rates were down. That could largely be explained because there were not enough detectives to adequately cover the growing number of homicides. But commanders and deputy chiefs are notoriously deaf when it comes to down-trending job performance numbers. Alexa had to attend the bimonthly COMSTAT meeting and defend her clearance record. That meeting was scheduled for tomorrow. She looked impatient and worried.

"How'd the funeral go?" she said, her eyes still on the printouts, not giving me her full attention.

I pushed past that question, closed the door, and crossed to her desk.

"Honey, I haven't asked you for anything since you got this job but I'm about to break that rule."

"Please don't," she said looking at me with new, hard-edged determination.

I was her husband, and at home, there wasn't much we couldn't find a way to agree on. But we had carefully defined our two worlds. On the job she was my boss and we always found a way to keep it completely professional.

"Zack?" she asked, wearily.

I nodded.

She pushed the stack of crime stats aside and rubbed her eyes for a minute before looking up. The expression that formed when her hands came away was polite disinterest. This wasn't going to be easy.

"I've been giving this a lot of thought," I started by saying. "I owe this guy. We both owe him."

"How do I owe him? I never really knew him all that well until you two partnered up, and I'm just finding out he was already a big time lush by then. He needs a twelve step program."

"You owe him because he saved me. If he hadn't been there for me in the Valley, then there would be no us. I know he's behaving badly and something is going really wrong inside him, but I can't just walk away."

"Let's get something straight. Zack Farrell is only one of two hundred detectives under my command. If I give him a pass, or look the other way, how in the name of God, can I drop the hammer on the next drunk who Ambles through here? We have citizens to protect. This is a violent city." She pushed the crime stats across the desk toward me. "I'm supposed to be a firewall between all this and the law-abiding citizens we protect. How do I do that if I don't maintain guidelines and standards?"

"Honey, don't preach the police manual at me."

She just stared.

"Okay, look. It's complicated, but here's my problem. I'm not sure I really knew Zack back then. I was so out of it, I wasn't focused on much. Now that I am, I'm not sure I like what I see. But as a man, I can't accept what I accepted from him back then and not give something back. This is a debt and I've got to find some answer I can live with or it will change the way I view myself."

She considered this, then sighed loudly. "Where is he?"

"Right outside your door. He's drunk. Just got through cussing out half the task force. For all I know, one of them has already given him up to Underwood. The whole thing is out of control, but I've gotta try. He might be suicidal. I can't just stand around and watch him auger in."

She looked at me for a moment before picking up her phone and dialing a number.

"This is Lieutenant Scully in the Detective Bureau. Notify the Psychiatric section I want a two-man team to come to my office and pick up one of my detectives. I'm ordering a three-day hospital evaluation." She waited, then said, "He's undergoing extreme stress, both marital and financial, possibly suicidal. I want him held in the secure wing at Queen of Angels until you can make a determination. All reports on his condition are to be released only to my office." She waited again, then said, "Thanks."

She hung up and fixed me with one of her no-bullshitall-business stares. "This puts him in the system, Shane.

If he flunks the psych review, he's gonna get flagged. All this does is take him out of action for three days and keep him from doing something foolish. Maybe he comes back to us or maybe he gets marked unfit for duty. If that happens, he gets the gate."

"With a medical waiver he could go out on early retirement without affecting his pension."

"That would be up to Tony, the Commission, and the Bureau of Professional Standards," which was our new media-friendly name for Internal Affairs. I could see she was angry. "This isn't the way it's supposed to work," she added.

Thirty minutes later, two psychiatric paramedics arrived. Zack was led into the elevator. Just before the door closed, he turned and looked at me, a stunned, betrayed expression on his swollen face.

Chapter
21

What's with all these embassy cars? Where's our Intel on these people?"

Underwood was pissed, studying the digital photo blow-ups from the funeral. Brendan Villalobos, Mace Ward, Ruben Bola and I were crowded in his office.

The idea that foreign embassies might lodge a career-ending complaint in the federal hierarchy, definitely had Underwood worried. It was no fun being bait at the bottom of the political aquarium. While Underwood bitched about our inefficiency, I tried to get the imag
e o
f Zack's swollen, disillusioned face to retreat to some dark place in the back of my mind.

"We gotta find out who these fucking people are," Underwood said.

"This big guy dressed in the tweed jacket left in a car from the Russian Embassy," Villalobos said, pointing at the pictures.

Ruben Bola followed his lead and picked up two photos. "This bald guy in the blue blazer left in an Israeli embassy car. The foxy blonde in the business suit was in a silver Jag. We ran her plates but they came back to a company called Allied Freight Forwarding. Answering machine, post office box address. Probably a phone drop."

Brendan Villalobos picked up photos of the guys wearing Forest Lawn jumpsuits. "Anybody been able to identify these two cream machines?" he asked.

The African American was implausibly handsome. The shot of his partner showed a thin, narrow-waisted white guy with tattoos. He had an uneven, sandy flattop that looked like he'd done it himself with hedge shears.

"Where's their car?" Brendan asked.

I rummaged around and found a shot of an old Dodge Charger pulling out of the lot. Darleen and Kyle had printed several blow-ups of the rear bumper giving us a readable view of the license plate. "California plate IdaMae-Victor three-seven-five," I said. "It came back to somebody named Leland Zant."

"And?" Agent Orange had lost patience with us. "Extensive drug record," Ruben added quickly
,
keeping his eyes on his notes. "Guy changes addresses a lot. Sally's trying to dig through the clutter and get a current."

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door and Sally Quinn stuck her head in. "Zant is doing a third strike in Soledad. He's been up there since last August."

"So if he's in the cooler, who's driving this Charger?" Underwood barked. "Come on, don't make me pull it out in scraps."

Sally continued, "Zant went down for moving forty kilos of cut. With that much weight, we popped him for felony dealing and the car became an LAPD asset seizure. The registration just transferred."

"This Charger is an LAPD undercover?" Underwood frowned.

"Looks like it, sir," Sally answered.

"So keep going. . . . Who was driving it? Getting a full report outta you is worse than dental surgery."

Detective Quinn was turning red with anger, but to her credit, her expression didn't change. She took a breath and held his gaze. "It was checked out of our motor pool to CTB."

"I give up." Underwood was getting snotty now. "Counter Terrorism Bureau," she clarified. "They're upstairs on four."

Underwood started rubbing his forehead with a freckled hand. "What the hell is going on here? Did we just accidentally stumble into some multinational antiterrorism case?"

Nobody answered.

"Who in CTB checked the car out of your motor pool?" he asked Sally, holding up the two pictures of the Forest Lawn workers. "Was it these two? Did you get their names or did you even bother to ask?"

"Don't know who they are, sir. It was checked out on what they call a blind borrow." Detective Quinn's voice was strained. She'd had her fill.

"I wanta know who these two people are. If they're cops, I want their names." Underwood was apoplectic, waving the digital pictures at us.

After a long silence, I volunteered. "Homicide Special shares the floor with CTB. I've gotten to know a few people. You want, I could wander around up there and see if I can find out who these guys are."

"Hey . . . that sure sounds like a plan." Underwood rolled his eyes in undisguised frustration.

I glanced at my fellow task force members. They all wore deadpans that would have won poker tournaments in Vegas.

I went upstairs and wandered around with our digital prints stashed out of sight in a manila folder. CTB was divided into two sections. The operational side was a regular squad room with partitions, which housed your basic, high-testosterone, door-kicking commando types. Across the main aisle from them was the Intelligence Section. It was a cluttered cube farm full of nerdy boys and girls with fluorescent tans, plastic belts, and intense expressions.

The way it was explained to me, CTB Intelligence worked on background, accessing computer data banks
,
and looking for known associates of terrorist cell members. Once a new list of potential bomb throwers was compiled, Intelligence would turn it over to Operations. Operations would then make a determination on which targets looked promising and the lieutenant in charge would assign one of the surveillance squads for a twenty-four-hour look-see. Sometimes they'd spot the target buying drugs. Sometimes they were conspiring with other known terrorists or buying street guns. Sometimes they were just picking up prostitutes. Whatever the crime, Operations would arrest them and pull them in for questioning.

What CTB had learned since 9/11, was that once a terrorist was arrested, most hardcore operations like Al Qaeda would never deal with him again. One minor bust, even one that didn't stick, eliminated a cell member forever. As a result, the terrorist cells were so busy rebuilding, they didn't get around to running plays.