The Last Word (12 page)

If only the city’s rapists, thieves, and murderers defecated constantly like rats did, Flegner’s LAPD career might have been astonishing. He probably would have been chief of police by now.

His abilities also extended to mosquito tracking and abatement. Even in his off-duty hours, he liked to prowl roadside ditches, flood channels, and stagnant ponds, laying mosquito traps and looking for larvae.

He was the perfect man to investigate the Hoffman case. His first stop was the Hoffman residence in Topanga Canyon to interview the grieving family about their movements in the week preceding the victim’s admission to Community General Hospital. He needed to zero in on where Hoffman might have been attacked by that virus-carrying mosquito.

He learned that Hoffman, because of his deteriorating physical condition, rarely left their modest bungalow. And when he did go out, it was only for short walks in their secluded, woodsy neighborhood.

That made Flegner’s job a lot easier. The viral hot spot was likely nearby.

So Flegner took a walk down along the narrow, badly paved road outside the Hoffmans’ 1940s-era home. It was like discovering a lost civilization in a hidden valley.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Topanga Canyon was favored by hippies, poets, actors, lesbians, and folksingers. Flegner could see that some of those liberal, free-loving, pot-smoking, creative types still lived there, surrounded by a cloud of incense and the tinkle of wind chimes. He knew because he could see their droppings—the faded Clinton/Gore bumper stickers on their cars, the Trader Joe’s grocery bags in their trash, the yellowed issues of
Rolling Stone
in their recycle bins.

But it wasn’t the signs of survivors of a bygone era that Flegner was searching for. He was interested in standing water where mosquitoes could breed—empty pools and hot tubs, stagnant birdbaths, dormant fountains, and clogged catch basins. He found plenty of those and took samples from the puddles of green water for analysis.

Flegner was on his way back to his Vector Control vehicle, a decade-old Impala, to drop off his samples and grab some mosquito traps when he saw the dead bird. It was lying amidst a pile of leaves at the base of a tree.

He squatted down and examined the bird. He didn’t know whether it was a mourning dove, a condor, or a baby pterodactyl. He wasn’t an ornithologist; he was an ex-cop. He might not know a lot about birds, but he knew a thing or two about death.

Whatever killed this bird did it from the
inside.

He knew something else, too.

Birds start dying of West Nile virus before people do.

Flegner put on a pair of rubber gloves, picked up the decomposing bird, and placed it in a plastic bag, which he dutifully labeled with the date, time, and location where it was found.

He wouldn’t wait for the lab results before acting on his instinct. In the morning, he would order his troops to bug-bomb the entire neighborhood.

Teeg Cantrell had given up any pretense of defiance. Either he’d resigned himself to his bleak future or he’d weakened under the hypnotic power of McDonald’s Extra Value Meals. As long as Steve kept the chicken nuggets, Big Macs, and hot apple turnovers coming to the interrogation room, Teeg was happy to talk, describing in detail his various transactions with Gaylord Yokley.

Kirby Kirkland, Teeg’s young, inexperienced public defender, was left with nothing to do but draw caricatures of celebrities in the style of
Simpsons
characters on his yellow legal pad. Steve thought Kirby had a brighter future as an artist than a lawyer.

“How did your gang get into the gun business with Yokley?” Steve asked, finally getting around to a question he probably should have started with.

“This homey who got out of Sunrise after doing a dime. He has a lot of juice, knew all about Yokley, said this dude could get us all the
quetes
we wanted,” Teeg said. “If this homey hadn’t stood up for Yokley, there was no way we would’ve been doing business in the burbs with some gringo.”

Steve was amused when Teeg self-consciously peppered his speech with Spanish to give himself more street credibility. He wondered how that played for him outside of interrogation rooms.

But he got Teeg’s point. The gang wouldn’t have been talking to some white guy at all if it wasn’t for the respected homey’s recommendation. Steve knew better than to ask Teeg who the homey was. Ratting out Yokley was fine. No one was going to hold that against Teeg. Ratting out a homey, though, would get Teeg killed.

It wouldn’t be too hard for Steve to figure out which one of Teeg’s buddies had spent ten years at Sunrise.

Which was Carter Sweeney’s home.

Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have meant anything. Almost all the killers that Steve and his father had put away were spending their miserable lives at Sunrise. But given Yokley’s ties to ROAR, and Sweeney’s recent meeting with Mark, Steve couldn’t ignore the connection.

“Have you ever heard your homey mention Carter Sweeney or ROAR?” Steve asked.

“I’m not talking about my homeys,” Teeg said, slurping on a McDonald’s shake.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Did you ever hear Yokley mention them?”

“We weren’t homeys, you know? We didn’t kick it together.”

“You never talked about anything besides guns?”

“We talked about Mariah Carey and Beyonce’s asses,” Teeg said. “Or maybe it was J-Lo’s. Like which one was better, you know? And he’s the one who told me about LaShonda.”

“He knew LaShonda?”

“He knew how she was disrespecting me to my
gente
,” Teeg said, color rising in his face.

“You mean by asking you for money to help raise your
niños
?” Steve said, tired of the Spanish shtick.

“How do you know they’re mine? Yokley says she’s been stepping out with those
pinchi putos
from the barrio the whole time I was with her.”

Steve didn’t see how a white racist in Palmdale could pick up street gossip like that or why he would pass it on to Teeg.

“When did Yokley tell you this?”

“The day that somebody took a shot at the bitch,” Teeg said.

“That was you, Teeg.”

“You don’t know that,” Teeg said, elbowing his lawyer.

“Actually, I do,” Steve said.

“That’s true,” Kirby Kirkland said.

Steve noticed that the latest
Simpsons
character on the legal pad looked a lot like him. He wasn’t sure whether to be offended or flattered.

“What kind of lawyer are you?” Teeg protested.

“The police have got you for this, no question about it,” Kirby said. “The best we can hope for is a few good words to the judge from the prosecution on your behalf when it comes to sentencing and where you do your time. That’s the reason we’re cooperating.”

At that moment the door opened and Tony Sisk strode boldly into the room, as if his entrance had been preceded by an orchestral fanfare. He wore his trademark double-breasted suit and, incongruously, enough bling to hold his own with any rapper.

Sisk was familiar to everyone in the room and anyone who’d watched Court TV. He was one of LA’s more flamboyant and expensive criminal defense attorneys.

“Do not say another word, Mr. Cantrell,” Sisk said, then pointed a finger accusingly at Kirby, which was pretty amazing, considering the heavy ring that was around his manicured digit. “This pitiful accident of human evolution is a servant for the jackals who’ve unjustly imprisoned you.”

“Huh?” Teeg said.

Kirby was completely flustered in the face of Sisk’s gale-force personality.

Sisk sighed, disappointed that his flowery oratory had been wasted on his new client. “This public defender isn’t defending your interests. I will.”

“You will?” Teeg’s eyes widened in shock. “But I can’t afford you.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Sisk said. “Your good friend Gaylord Yokley is paying me.”

“Why would he do that?” Teeg asked.

“Because he despises injustice and cruelty, Mr. Cantrell, as do I.”

As much as Steve disliked Sisk’s clients, he couldn’t bring himself to dislike the man himself. He enjoyed Sisk’s ridiculous bluster, even when it was directed at him.

“Isn’t it obvious, Teeg? Yokley wants to shut you up before you can do him any more damage,” Steve said. “The only interests he’s looking out for are his own.”

“He told me about LaShonda,” Teeg said.

“And look where it’s gotten you,” Steve said.

“Mr. Yokley had nothing to do with your unlawful, disgraceful, and unconscionable detention,” Sisk said, and then pointed his bejeweled finger at Steve. “Are you going to take the word of this sock-puppet of the ruling intelligentsia or are you going to listen to me, a man you know to be a champion of the oppressed? It’s up to you, Mr. Cantrell.”

Teeg turned to Kirby. “You’re fired.”

Kirby looked almost relieved. Sisk smiled victoriously and waved Steve and Kirby out of the room.

“Go throw yourselves on the mercy of your masters,” Sisk said. “I need to speak in private with my very important client.”

Steve and Kirby left the room without a word. Out in the hall, Steve turned to the public defender, who seemed to be in a mild state of shock.

“Do you think I could fit ‘sock-puppet of the ruling intelligentsia’ on a business card?” Steve asked. “It sounds a lot more impressive than ‘lieutenant.’ ”

“If Sisk gets Yokley and Cantrell acquitted,” Kirby said, “you’ll have the chance to find out.”

Ken Hoffman’s death from West Nile virus was the lead story on every local eleven o’clock news program and was even mentioned on CNN, Fox News, and most of the national newscasts. Mark figured it probably made the BBC and Al Jazeera, too.

It was a story no news director could resist. A man undergoes a heart-lung transplant, the operation is a success, but he dies from a common mosquito bite.

And wherever the story was told, one fact was sure to be mentioned: The man died at Community General Hospital.

The death was a tragedy and no one’s fault, but Mark was sure that Janet Dorcott wouldn’t see it that way. Once again, Community General was getting negative press and Mark was involved. It didn’t matter than his involvement was tangential at best and that his name never came up in the news reports. He would still get nailed for it.

So be it.

Mark was switching off the TV when Steve came in, exhausted.

“Alone tonight?” Mark asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Relieved?”

Mark shrugged. “Just curious.”

“It isn’t serious between Olivia and me,” Steve said. “It’s just casual for now.”

“Of course it is. I can’t remember the last time you had a serious relationship.”

Steve flopped onto the couch across from Mark, who sat in his favorite leather reading chair, his feet up on the ottoman.

“Fifth grade. Stacey O’Quinn. That was serious,” Steve said. “She broke my heart and I’ve never recovered.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“It was thirty years ago,” Steve said. “How should I know?”

“You’re a detective,” Mark said. “You could find out.”

“God, how pathetic would that be?” Steve said.

Mark studied his son for a long moment. Steve couldn’t meet his father’s gaze.

“When did you find her?” Mark asked.

Steve grimaced with embarrassment. “Last year. She’s living down in Costa Mesa with her second husband. She’s got two kids from her first marriage and one from her second. She’s a hairdresser.”

“Sounds like you were better off without her,” Mark said. “How’s the Yokley case going?”

“Nowhere since Teeg lawyered up,” Steve said.

“Didn’t he have a lawyer already?”

“He had a public defender,” Steve said. “Now he’s got Tony Sisk, who also happens to represent Gaylord Yokley.”

Mark felt a shiver on the back of his neck. He was suddenly and instinctively aware of danger all around him, as if he were walking down a dark alley in a very bad neighborhood.

“Those aren’t his only clients,” Mark said.

“I know he also represents that basketball player who raped a cheerleader and that sitcom star who got caught buying crystal meth on skid row. He’s slumming with Yokley and Teeg.”

“He’s also Carter Sweeney’s lawyer,” Mark said.

Steve tensed up, undoubtedly feeling the same sense of danger that his father was.

“Since when?”

“I don’t know,” Mark said. “But Sisk is the one who called me with Sweeney’s request for a meeting.”

This wasn’t good. Not at all.

“What the hell is going on here?” Steve asked.

“Carter Sweeney’s grand plan,” Mark said. “Whatever it is.”

There was some ominous meaning behind these events, and whatever it was, Mark was sure it wasn’t good for him, Steve, or anybody else.

“By getting his lawyer to represent Yokley and Teeg, Sweeney is virtually admitting to us that he’s behind the plot to provoke a gang war to create anarchy in LA,” Steve said. “Why would he want to do that?”

“Ego?”

“But he failed,” Steve said. “Why take credit for a failure?”

“Perhaps to show us that even in prison he’s still a force to be reckoned with.”

“If Sisk has been relaying orders to Yokley on Sweeney’s behalf in the furtherance of a criminal enterprise, we can arrest him.”

“You’d have to prove it first,” Mark said. “And you have nothing to go on but your suspicions and mine. There isn’t a shred of actual evidence.”

“So what do you suggest? That we should just be satisfied that we stopped Sweeney’s plot?”

“What makes you think we’ve done that?” Mark asked.

 

Steve filled Mark in on everything he’d learned from Teeg. Mark was especially intrigued by Yokley’s uncharacteristic tip to Teeg that his girlfriend was sleeping around with members of rival gangs. Did Yokley want to provoke the shooting? Or did Sweeney? And if so, why?