Sins of the Fathers (41 page)

The hot part involves at least two highly placed members of the council, who have threatened to resign if the city caves. I haven’t got the names, but my sources say shouting was heard within the chambers where the last meeting was held!

Lindy could almost hear the click of mosaic tiles dropping into place, starting to form a picture. The color scheme and the outline were taking shape.

The next installment was dated a couple of days later.

The dam has burst!

We know this much. A representative of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division was in a heated exchange with at least four members of the council, including the mayor’s chief of staff, Orrin Martin, and the LAPD Deputy Chief, Palmer Kelly, as well as a former police officer, George Mahoney.

Lindy threw her hands in the air, spooking Cardozo. “Roxy!”

“What,
what
?”

“Get your car keys.” Lindy broke out of her chair.

2.

It took half an hour for Roxy to drive to Judge Greene’s house. A thick blanket of fog covered the coastline and made the darkness more impenetrable than usual.

The lights pouring from Judge Greene’s windows filled Lindy with relief. She knocked on the front door, rang the bell. She heard footsteps inside, then the porch light went on. In the pause that followed, Lindy waved at the peephole.

The door opened. Judge Greene was in a bathrobe and slippers. “Lindy, what on earth—”

“Judge, please. I’m sorry to surprise you. But I didn’t want to say anything over the phone.”

“What is it?”

“It involves the police,” Lindy said. “And I need help.”

“Come in.” Greene led Lindy and Roxy through the house to the outside balcony. He left the sliding door open. The curtains floated on the soft breeze. Lindy could hear the nearby ocean, encased in a bubble of heavy mist. Greene sat down. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

Lindy took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Let’s start with Darren DiCinni. His mother is a prostitute, someone Drake DiCinni, using a different name, has taken an interest in. Whether Darren is really his son or not, we can’t really determine right now, but for some reason Drake gets it into his head that Darren isn’t his. And he kills the mother.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve got several sources. I just want you to tell me if you think I’m crazy.”

“I know you’re not crazy, Lindy.”

Lindy paused, then said, “Drake comes out here to start a new life, bringing his son along. Only he doesn’t treat him like a son. He brutalizes him. But not without purpose. He wants his son to literally think he, Drake, is God.”

The judge nodded. “I think I know where you’re going. Drake is the one who actually put his son up to the killings.”

“Yes.”

“So when Darren said God told him to do it, in his own mind that’s what he believed.”

“That’s exactly what he believed,” Roxy said.

“Question,” Greene said. “What was the motive? Why would Drake DiCinni want Darren to kill a bunch of innocent kids? Was it his way of getting rid of Darren? That seems an awfully complicated way to do it. Besides, what if Darren eventually implicated him?”

“That much he could probably cover. He could say—and in fact he did—that Darren was always a troubled kid, and even all the discipline he meted out couldn’t keep him in control.”

“Why the kids then?”

“It wasn’t the kids at all,” Lindy said.

“What?”

“The kids were just cover. Darren was really going after one man, the one adult who got shot, Dorai.”

Greene frowned. “How do you figure?”

“I saw the uncut version of the videotape. On the first few shots, Darren was clearly aiming his rifle at the third-base side, where Dorai was coaching and was the first to go down.”

“So somebody altered the videotape?”

“Exactly. Because they didn’t want anyone to know Dorai was the target.”

“Why do you suppose Dorai was the target?”

“Dorai was a conspiracy nut. He had his own Web site dedicated to this stuff. He updated it daily. One of his theories involved a conspiracy within the Los Angeles Police Department, a small group that didn’t care about civil liberties or inconvenient things like the Constitution. They just wanted to get rid of bad people. Dorai was actively soliciting people to email him with any information. I emailed him, but of course I never heard back. I did, however, get run off the road one dark night on Topanga.”

“Run off? You didn’t have an accident?”

“That’s what I wanted people to think.”

“I’ve got to tell you,”Greene said finally, “this is about the wildest story I’ve ever heard.”

“But it’s true,” Roxy said.

Greene shook his head. “Then we are in a lot of trouble.”

Lindy saw something move behind the curtains. Immediately the movement became a shadow, the shadow became a body, and the body held a gun.

She looked up at the face silhouetted by the back lighting. She knew that face.

Drake DiCinni held the gun calmly, pointed directly at her.

3.

Mona’s thoughts were not her thoughts.

She knew this. She was in a hospital room—
tomb
her mind said. Her stomach, they said something about the lining, her insides churning and acidic.

She had collapsed, or something like it. Where? She had a vague memory of arms reaching out, hers, and arms reaching for her.

George Mahoney’s arms.

That was it. He had kissed her. Hard. And then she must have blacked out, the pain and the confusion and the ugliness of it, too much.

She had failed Matthew.

Yes failed yes failed yes failed.
And there was no turning back, no rewind option.

Oh Matthew, forgive me, I let you down, I failed, I am no good for
anyone—

She stopped, hearing voices—small, scattered voices agreeing with her. One of them sounded like Matthew’s.

No! Oh God, no. Don
’
t let that be him, God. Not Matthew.
He would never have said that to her. He couldn’t be saying that to her now.
No no no.

Voices. The killer had heard a voice like this, hadn’t he? Heard the voice of God, they said, the lawyers said, some doctor said. God telling him what to do. And they said his father had hurt him, made him insane . . .

Insane.

Was she insane? Was this what it was like? To have no thoughts certain, nothing to trust in, to never know any peace, ever again?

Was this what it was like to be the killer?

God, please don
’
t let it be.

Jesus, please don
’
t let it be.

“Jesus.” She said it out loud, heard the name and for a brief moment there were no voices in her head, there was no torment.

And in that moment of stillness there
was
a knowing.

4.

Lindy thought,
We
’
re all dead.

How had DiCinni found them? Did he follow her all the way from the Valley? Was he the one who had been watching her?

He
’
ll kill us all.
Roxy was behind her, at the balcony rail. The judge was in a chair. They were all sitting ducks.

DiCinni’s eyes were calm as he looked at Lindy. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you? That’s too bad.”

Lindy expected the gun to blast. But then Judge Greene spoke with a firm, measured tone. “Put the gun down, DiCinni. I’ll handle this.”

Lindy’s heart dropped inside her, a dead weight. Her mouth went dry when she looked at Greene.

“Tell her,” DiCinni said with a wicked smile.

Greene looked at Lindy. “I didn’t know anything about the attempt on your life. You have to believe me. You have to understand the whole.”

No. There could be no understanding, no
whole.

“After the federal consent decree, crime went up,” Greene explained. “It’s brutal out there. Good people, good cops, getting killed because we can’t bring killers down. We know who they are, but our hands are tied.”

“So you plant evidence?”

“Not always.”

“Against Marcel Lee?”

“Lindy, please try to see the big picture.”

“And this guy, Dorai, caught on. That was why you had him killed. And Drake DiCinni works for you?”

Greene sighed. “In a war against the devil, you can’t always use angels.”

Lindy felt the world swirling like a crazy kaleidoscope. “And you picked me to defend Darren because you thought I didn’t have much fight left in me.”

“I didn’t want you to get dragged into this thing,” Roger Greene said.

“You thought”—she almost choked—“you thought I’d just roll over. You wanted a lawyer who wouldn’t push too hard. You thought I couldn’t handle another Marcel Lee case.”

Greene nodded slowly. “It would have been best, and you know that.”

“How deep does it go?”

“What goes deep,” Greene said, “is evil. Evil in this city. Allowed to prosper because the city sold out to the Justice Department on police reform, because politicians don’t have to sit in a courtroom day after day and look at victims’ faces, or the faces of the families of dead people. Listen, Lindy, Rampart was—”

“You were on the council.” Lindy’s mind clicked pieces into place. “You were opposed to the reforms. You were the angry one who resigned.”

“It was a kangaroo commission. It was a farce.”

“So you organized your own Rampart division. You were the one behind Marcel, weren’t you?”

“You know Marcel Lee is guilty as sin.”

She shook her head. “Not unless he is found guilty by a jury in a trial without lies.”

“The city is better off with him in prison.”

“It’s wrong.”

“We’re in an awkward situation here, Lindy,” Greene sighed.

“
Awkward?
”

She looked at Drake DiCinni, who just stood there, gun in hand.

“But why him?” Lindy said.

Greene opened his mouth to speak, but DiCinni cut him off.

“That’s enough,” DiCinni said.

He shot Roger Greene in the chest.

5.

Leon Colby looked out the window of his apartment, at the lights of Ventura Boulevard below. The reds and greens and blues of the street signs and restaurants gave the night a celebrative glow.

What was there to celebrate in this town anymore?

What was wrong with his ambitions? Where did they go all of a sudden? It was strange and unsettling. Ever since he could remember he had been charging, always going forward, head down, with all his might.

Had he ever identified what he was charging toward?

Darren DiCinni heard voices in his head, telling him to do bad things. Were they any different from the voice of ambition in Leon’s own head? An ambition that got him to turn a blind eye sometimes, to cut corners, to justify?

How different?

He let the curtain go and sat in a chair, putting his head back in the darkness.
This is what life is like for so many people. Darkness. You
keep moving because you
’
re afraid something might be sneaking up on
you.

What was sneaking up on him?

He flicked on the lamp.

Pills, prayer.
How his father had believed in prayer. How he could preach about it.

Colby remembered something. In his bookcase. Where was it? He searched the bottom right shelf and found it. The Bible his father had given him when Leon was in high school.

It had his name in gold letters on the cover.

But it showed little sign of use.

Colby took it back to the chair and sat with it on his lap. He had known this book as a kid, as a star of vacation Bible school. Even then he wanted to be the best. He had memorized all the books in order and could recite fifty verses.

They started coming back to him in random order.

Trust in the L
ORD
with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own
understanding.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth
was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said,
Let there be light: and there was light.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Colby put his hand on the Bible. It had been a long time, a long time since he was nine years old, at his father’s old church in Inglewood, coming forward to be baptized.