“But it was going to be my turn.”
Now Stone was pouting.
“You had your turn and you blew it,” Carver said. “Now it goes to me. So why don’t you go back out there and get to work. You still owe me status reports on towers eighty through eighty-five. I want them by the end of the day.”
“Whatever.”
“Go. And cheer up, Freddy. We’ll be on the hunt again before the end of the week.”
Stone stood up and turned toward the door. Carver watched him go, wondering how long it would be before he had to get rid of him. Permanently. Working with a partner was always preferable. But eventually all partners got too close and assumed too much. They started calling you by a name no one has ever used. They started thinking it was an equal partnership with equal voting rights. That was unacceptable and dangerous. One person called the shots. Himself.
“Close the door, please,” Carver said.
Stone did as instructed. Carver went back to the cameras. He quickly pulled up the camera over the reception area and saw Yolanda sitting behind the counter. Geneva was gone. Jumping from camera to camera he started searching for her.
FOUR: The Big Three-oh
By the time Sonny Lester and I left the apartment where Wanda Sessums lived, the projects were alive and busy. School was out and the drug dealers and their customers were up. The parking lots, playgrounds and burned-out lawns between the apartment buildings were becoming crowded with children and adults. The drug business here was a drive-through operation with an elaborate setup involving lookouts and handlers of all ages who would direct buyers through the maze of streets in the projects to a buy location that was continuously changed throughout the day. The government planners who designed and built the place had no idea they were creating a perfect environment for the cancer that would in one way or another destroy most of its inhabitants.
I knew all of this because I had ridden with South Bureau narcotics teams on more than one occasion while writing my semiannual updates on the local drug war.
As we crossed a lawn and approached Lester’s company car we moved with a heads-down-minding-our-own-business purpose. We just wanted to get out of Dodge. It wasn’t until we were almost right to the car that I saw the young man leaning against the driver’s door. He was wearing untied work boots, blue jeans dropped halfway down his blue-patterned boxer shorts and a spotless white T-shirt that almost glowed in the afternoon sun. It was the uniform of the Crips set, which ruled the projects. They were known as the BH set, which alternately meant Bounty Hunters or Blood Hunters, depending on who was spraying the paint.
“How y’all doin’?” he said.
“We’re fine,” Lester said. “Just going back to work.”
“You the po-po now?”
Lester laughed like that was the biggest joke he’d heard in a week.
“Nah, man, we’re with the paper.”
Lester nonchalantly put his camera bag in the trunk and then came around to the door where the young man was leaning. He didn’t move.
“Gotta go, bro. Can I get by you there?”
I was on the other side of the car by my door. I felt my insides tighten. If there was going to be a problem, it was going to happen right now. I could see others in the same gang uniform standing back on the shaded side of the parking lot, ready to be called in if needed. I had no doubt that they all had weapons either on their person or hidden nearby.
The young man leaning on our car didn’t move. He folded his arms and looked at Lester.
“What you talking to moms about up there, bro?”
“Alonzo Winslow,” I said from my side. “We don’t think he killed anybody and we’re looking into it.”
The young man pushed off the car so he could turn and look at me.
“That right?”
I nodded.
“We’re working on it. We just started and that’s why we came to talk to Mrs. Sessums.”
“Then she tell you about the tax.”
“What tax?”
“Yeah, she pay a tax. Anybody in business ’round here payin’ a tax.”
“Really?”
“The street tax, man. See, any newspaper people that come ’round here to talk about Zo Slow has to pay the street tax. I can take it for you now.”
I nodded.
“How much?”
“It be fitty dollah t’day.”
I’d expense it and see if Dorothy Fowler raised hell. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my money. I had fifty-three dollars and quickly extracted two twenties and a ten.
“Here,” I said.
I moved to the back of the car and the young man moved away from the driver’s door. As I paid him Lester got in and started the car.
“We have to go,” I said as I handed over the money.
“Yeah, you do. You come back and the tax is double, Paperboy.”
“Fine.”
I should have let it go at that but I couldn’t leave without asking the obvious question.
“Doesn’t it matter to you that I’m working on getting Zo out?”
The young man raised his hand and rubbed his jaw as though giving the question some serious thought. I saw the letters F-U-C-K tattooed across his knuckles. My eyes went to his other hand, hanging limp at his side. I saw D-A-5-0 tattooed across the other ridge of knuckles and I got my answer. Fuck the police. With sentiment like that on his hands, it was no wonder he would extort those trying to help a fellow member of the crew. It was everybody for himself down here.
The kid laughed and turned away without answering. He’d wanted me to see his hands.
I got into the car and Lester backed out of the space. I turned around and saw the young man who had just extorted fifty dollars from us doing the Crip walk. He bent down and used the bills I had just given him to pantomime a quick polish of his shoes, then straightened up and did the heel-toe-heel-toe shuffle the Crips called their own. His fellow bangers over in the shade whooped it up as he approached.
I didn’t feel the tension in my neck start to dissolve until we got back to the 110 and headed north. Then I put the fifty bucks out of my mind and started to feel good as I reviewed what had been accomplished during the trip. Wanda Sessums had agreed to cooperate fully in the investigation of the Denise Babbit–Alonzo Winslow case. Using my cell phone, she had called Winslow’s public defender, Jacob Meyer, and told him that, as the defendant’s guardian, she was authorizing my total access to all documents and evidence relating to the case. Meyer reluctantly agreed to meet with me the next morning between hearings in the downtown juvenile hall. He didn’t really have a choice. I had told Wanda that if Meyer didn’t cooperate, there were plenty of private attorneys who would handle the case for free once they knew there were headlines coming. Meyer’s choice was either to work with me and get some media attention for himself or give the case up.
Wanda Sessums had also agreed to get me into Sylmar Juvenile Hall so that I could interview her grandson. My plan was to use the public defender’s case file to become familiar with the case before I sat down to talk to Winslow. It would be the key interview of the piece I would write. I wanted to know all there was to know before I talked to him.
All in all, it had been a good trip—the fifty-dollar tariff notwithstanding—and I was thinking about how I was going to present my plan to Prendergast. Then Lester interrupted my thoughts.
“I know what you’re doing,” he said.
“What am I doing?” I said.
“That washerwoman might be too dumb and the lawyer too worried about headlines to see it but I’m not.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re comin’ on like you’re the white knight that’s gonna prove the kid innocent and set him free. But you’re going to do the exact opposite of that, man. You’re going to use them to get inside the case to get all the juicy details, then you’re going to write a story about how a sixteen-year-old kid becomes a stone-cold killer. Hell, getting
an innocent man free is a damn newspaper cliché nowadays. But gettin’ inside the mind of a young killer like that? Tellin’ how society lets that kind of thing happen? That’s Pulitzer territory, bro.”
I didn’t say anything at first. Lester had me cold. I put together a defense and then responded.
“All I promised her was that I would investigate the case. Where it goes it goes, that’s all.”
“Bullshit. You’re using her because she’s too ignorant to know it. The kid will probably be just as stupid and go along, too. And we all know the lawyer will trade the kid for headlines. You really think you’re going to win the big one with this, don’t you?”
I shook my head and didn’t respond. I could feel my face getting red and I turned to look out the window.
“Hey, but it’s okay,” Lester said.
I turned and looked back at him and I read his face.
“What do you want, Sonny?”
“A piece, that’s all. We work it as a team. I go with you up to Sylmar and to court and I do all the photo work. You fill out a photo request, you put my name on it. Makes it a better package anyway. Especially for submissions.”
Meaning submissions to Pulitzer and other prize judges.
“Look,” I said, “I haven’t even told my editor about this yet. You are jumping way ahead. I don’t even know if they’ ll—”
“They’ll love it and you know it. They’re going to cut you loose to work it and they might as well cut me loose too. Who knows, maybe we both get a prize. They can’t lay you off if you bring home a Pulitzer.”
“You’re talking about the ultimate long shot, Sonny. You’re crazy. Besides that, I already got laid off. I’ve got twelve days and then I could give a shit about the Pulitzer Prize. I’m out of here.”
I saw his eyes register surprise at the news of my layoff. Then he nodded as he factored the new information into his ongoing scenario.
“Then this is the ultimate adios,” he said. “I get it. You leave ’em with a fuck-you—a story so good they gotta enter it in contests even though you’re long out the door.”
I didn’t respond. I hadn’t thought I was so easy to read. I turned back to the window. The freeway was elevated here and I could see block after block of houses crowded together. Many had blue tarps tied over their old, leaky roofs. The farther south you went in the city, the more of those tarps you saw.
“I still want in,” Lester said.
With complete access to Alonzo Winslow and his case now established, I was ready to discuss the story with my editor. By that I meant that I would officially say I was working it and my ace could put it on his futures budget. When I got back to the newsroom, I went directly over to the raft and found Prendergast at his desk. He was busily typing into his computer.
“Prendo, you got a minute?”
He didn’t even look up.
“Not right now, Jack. I got tagged with putting together the budget for the four o’clock. You got something for tomorrow besides Angela’s story?”
“No, I’m talking more long-range.”
He stopped typing and looked up at me and I realized he was confused. How long-range could a guy with twelve days left go?
“Not that long-range. We can talk later or tomorrow. Did Angela turn in the story?”
“Not yet. I think she was waiting for you to look it over. Can you go do that now and get it in? I want to get it out on the web as soon as we can.”
“I’m on it.”
“Okay, Jack. We’ll talk later or send me a quick e-mail.”
I turned and my eyes swept the newsroom. It was as long as a football field. I didn’t know where Angela Cook’s cubicle was located but I knew it would be close. The newer you were, the closer they kept you to the raft. The far reaches of the newsroom were for the veterans who supposedly needed less supervision. The south side was called Baja Metro and was inhabited by veteran reporters who still produced. The north side was the Deadwood Forest. This was where the reporters who did little reporting and even less writing were located. Some of them had sacrosanct positions by virtue of political connections or Pulitzer Prizes, and others were just incredibly skilled at keeping their heads down so they wouldn’t draw the attention of the assignment editors or the corporate cutters.
Over the top edge of one of the nearby pods I saw Angela’s blond hair. I went over.
“Howzit going?”
She jumped, startled.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s okay. I was just so absorbed in reading this.”
I pointed to her computer screen.
“Is that the story?”
Her face colored. I noticed she had tied her hair behind her head and stuck an editing pencil through the knot. It made her look even sexier than usual.
“No, actually, it’s from archives. It’s the story about you and that killer they called the Poet. That was creepy as hell.”
I checked the screen more closely. She had pulled out of archives a story from twelve years before. From when I was with the Rocky Mountain News and in competition with the Times on a story that had stretched from Denver to the East Coast and then all the way back to L.A. It was the biggest story I had ever chased. It had been the high point of my journalistic life—no, check that, it had been the apex of my entire life—and I didn’t want to be reminded that I had crossed that point so long ago.
“Yeah, it was pretty creepy. Are you finished with today’s story?”
“What happened to that FBI agent you teamed up with? Rachel Walling. One of the other stories said she was disciplined for crossing ethical lines with you.”
“She’s still around. Here in L.A., in fact. Can we look at today’s story? Prendo wants us to get it in so he can put it on the web.”
“Sure. I have it done. I was just waiting for you to see it before I sent it to the desk.”
“Let me get a chair.”
I pulled a chair away from an empty cubicle. Angela made room for me next to her and I read the twelve-inch story she had written. The news budget had slugged it in at ten inches, which meant it would likely be cut to eight, but you could always write long for the web edition because there were no space restrictions. Any reporter worth his or her salt would naturally go over budget. Your ego dictated that your story and your skill in telling it would make the ladder of editors who read it realize it was too good to be anything less than what you had turned in, no matter what edition it was written for.
The first edit I made was to take my name off the byline.
“Why, Jack?” Angela protested. “We reported this together.”
“Yeah, but you wrote it. You get the byline.”
She reached over to the keyboard and put her hand on top of my right hand.
“Please, I would like to have a byline with you. It would mean a lot to me.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“Angela, this is a twelve-inch story they’re probably going to cut to eight and bury inside. It’s just another murder story and it doesn’t need a double byline.”
“But it’s my first murder story here at the Times and I want your name on it.”
She still had her hand on mine. I shrugged and nodded.
“Suit yourself.”
She let go of my hand and I typed my name back into the byline. She then reached over again and held my right hand once more.
“Is this the one that got hurt?”
“Uh…”
“Can I see?”
I turned my hand over, exposing the starburst scar in the webbing between my thumb and forefinger. It was the place the bullet had passed through before hitting the killer they called the Poet in the face.
“I saw that you don’t use your thumb when you type,” she said.
“The bullet severed a tendon and I had surgery to reattach it but my thumb’s never really worked right.”
“What’s it feel like?”
“It feels normal. It just doesn??
?t do what I want it to do.”
She laughed politely.
“What?”
“I meant, what’s it feel like to kill somebody like that?”
The conversation was getting weird. What was the fascination this woman—this girl—had with killing?
“Uh, I don’t really like to talk about that, Angela. It was a long time ago and it wasn’t like I killed the guy. He kind of brought it on himself. He wanted to die, I think. He fired the gun.”
“I love serial killer stories but I had never heard about the Poet until some people said something about it today at lunch and then I Googled it. I’m going to get the book you wrote. I heard it was a bestseller.”
“Good luck. It was a bestseller ten years ago. It’s now been out of print at least five years.”
I realized that if she had heard about the book at lunch, then people were talking about me. Talking about the former bestseller, now overpaid cop shop reporter, getting the pink slip.
“Well, I bet you have a copy I could borrow,” Angela said.
She gave me a pouting look. I studied her for a long moment before responding. In that moment I knew she was some sort of death freak. She wanted to write murder stories because she wanted the details they don’t put in the articles and the TV reports. The cops were going to love her, and not just because she was a looker. She would fawn over them as they parceled out the gritty and grim descriptions of the crime scenes they worked. They would mistake her worship of the dark details for worship of them.
“I’ll see if I can find a copy at home tonight. Let’s get back to this story and get it in. Prendo is going to want to see it in the basket as soon as he’s out of the four o’clock meeting.”
“Okay, Jack.”
She raised her hands in mock surrender. I went back to the story and got through the rest of it in ten minutes, making only one change in the copy. Angela had tracked down the son of the elderly woman who had been raped and then stabbed to death in 1989. He was grateful that the police had not given up on the case and said so. I moved his sincerely laudatory quote up into the top third of the story.