Death Walks Skid Row Page 12

  “Oh, god,” he muttered, tearing a bit. “If the Bureau knew I needed so much help seeing, they’d reassign me to a desk.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” Ramona said. “I think you saved my life.”

  “Somebody tell me what the hell this is all about?” Scranton shouted again. “Rios, you’re about a half inch away from being kicked out of here.”

  Fleer rose shakily and flashed his badge at the man. “It’s above your level of understanding, sir,” he said.

  “Ohhhhhh,” the manager moaned. “Just what I need. Am I under arrest?”

  “No. Why would you be?

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. Maybe if I get drunk enough, James Bond’ll show up.” With that Ralph Scranton turned and shuffled back to his unit.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Michael?” Ramona asked.

  “You know that old cliché about seeing stars? Well, I had the entire galaxy for a while. But it’s going away.”

  “Did you see the person?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t recognize him. Since he was wearing gloves, there aren’t going to be any prints anywhere.”

  “The guy was a pro?”

  “Not much of one,” the agent said. “He had you in point blank range and didn’t fire.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have enough bullets for all three of us.”

  “Maybe,” Fleer said. “Let’s go back upstairs. I may need to lie down for a bit.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but let me get these first. I think I’m owed them.” Ramona quickly gathered up the flowers, – orange gladioli – from the floor. Then she led Fleer to the elevator and punched the ‘Up’ button.

  Back in her apartment, she dropped the flowers on the counter and turned to the agent. “Okay, not that I’m complaining, but how did you magically appear in the lobby?”

  “I didn’t think you should go down there on your own, so I followed,” he said, stretching out on her sofa. “You were already in the elevator, so I found the stairs. I was behind you when I saw him pull the gun, so I sprang into action. I pushed you out of the line of fire and spun around so I didn’t get shot in your place, and then disarmed him.”

  “You pushed me down?”

  “Would you rather have been shot? The irony is that I could have shot and wounded him first but I gave you my gun. I’m so used to wearing it at all times I didn’t even remember I was no longer carrying.”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s in my purse,” she said.

  Fleer went over to her bag and retrieved his weapon, sliding it back in its holster.

  “The real irony,” Ramona countered, “is that the damn police were just here, literally minutes before the guy showed up.”

  “It’s almost as though he was outside, watching, and waiting for them to leave, isn’t it?” Fleer said, with a slight tone of raspy sarcasm.

  “All right, all right, don’t rub it in. What made you so convinced I was in danger in the first place?”

  “Ramona, the flower delivery gambit is the oldest pretense there is. I’ve used it myself a time or two while looking for someone. You claimed someone fired at you in the parking garage, and then that same day flowers come to the door. I decided it was better to be safe than to have you in a body bag, even if I ran off unarmed.”

  “The police didn’t believe the first attempt, but now that I have a witness, they’ll believe this one!” she said, going for her telephone.

  Fleer stopped her. “No, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you should call them.”

  “Why not? This was a genuine attempt on my life!”

  “I know, but like you said, they didn’t believe you the first time. So leave the police out of this and let me handle it. I know a little about what you’re up against.”

  Marching over to her chair, Ramona plopped down, crossed her legs, and said, “All right, I’ve heard enough teasing. What is going on? What have I stumbled onto that’s worth someone killing me?”

  Fleer paced back and forth for a moment, then said, “The Bureau has been investigating some high-level improprieties in the city of Los Angeles for the better part of two years now, and everything seems to lead to one man.”

  “Let me guess … Rick Cantone, right?”

  Fleer shook his head. “I’m talking about Alberto Soto.”

  “The mayor of Los Angeles?”

  “The soon-to-be ex-mayor of Los Angeles,” Michael Fleer said.

  ****

  When Charlie Grosvenor had finished writing down all the passages of the twenty-eighth chapter of Proverbs that had been deliberately underlined, he read it back:

  ‘The wicked flee through … a driving rain … evildoers do not understand what is right … the rich whose ways are perverse … will fall into their own trap … the rich … how deluded they are … anyone tormented by guilt … is partner to one who destroys … those who trust in themselves are fools … but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.’

  While the underlined segments made an eerie sort of sense, there was no determining exactly what they were meant to convey. Still, several complete thoughts appeared to be represented. Charlie wrote the words out again, only this time adding some punctuation in places that seemed to call for it. What he got was:

  ‘The wicked flee through a driving rain. Evildoers do not understand what is right. The rich, whose ways are perverse, will fall into their own trap. The rich … how deluded they are! Anyone tormented by guilt is partner to one who destroys. Those who trust in themselves are fools, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.’

  This time Charlie was struck by the specifics. Why did the wicked flee through ‘a driving rain”? Why was that detail important? Similarly, why was there repetition of the word ‘rich’?

  After looking at the message, if that was really what it was, Charlie had another idea. Tearing off the page on which he had written the passage, he read it out loud while writing down a more modern interpretation of the words, almost like a translation. He tried not to think hard about it, simply writing down the first thing that came to his mind. When he was done, he read it back, and then, on a whim, erased certain words and replaced them with others, in order to change the text to past tense.

  ‘Evil people fled through a rainstorm not knowing right from wrong. The rich are always bad and someday they will get caught, even if they’re deluded about it. One who feels guilty was along with another one who destroyed something. Trusting yourself is foolish, but turning a blind eye means you’re damned.’

  Could that be meant as a reference to Jimmy’s bad eye?

  Charlie doubted it. There was a passage somewhere in the Bible about plucking out your own eye if it offends you, wasn’t there? If Jimmy was looking to use Scripture to describe himself, it seemed like that would be better fit.

  Looking at it again, this time Charlie’s attention was grabbed by the word ‘partner’. Every other reference to two different kinds of people was in the plural, which made sense, since the Scriptures were all about defining those who are unrepentant sinners and those who were saved. But ‘partner’ was singular, as was ‘one who destroys’.

  Suddenly the difference between ‘wicked’ and ‘evildoers’ seemed significant as well.

  What if the message was not meant to indicate two groups of people, but rather two individuals, one of whom might be as guilty as his partner of something, but not necessarily because he was evil?

  Looking at it from this perspective, Charlie wrote down another interpretation, this time in his own words.

  Upon reading it back, he felt chilled.

  ‘Two people who did something bad were driving through the rain to run away from it. One of them is evil with no concept of right and wrong. The evil one is also rich, so he thinks he can get away with it, but someday he will trap himself. The friend of the criminal has a conscience, but his partner foolishly assumed his wealth would allow him to escape judgment. The friend said nothing about the crime to anyon
e (maybe ‘closing his eyes’ for money), and suffers as a result.’

  One partner was evil and committed a horrible crime that the merely wicked partner covered up. It seemed obvious that Jimmy was the wicked, but not evil one, since he was the one worried about forgiveness. The one with a conscience.

  But who was the other? And what had they done?

  Maybe Jimmy had left more messages in the form of underlined words somewhere else in the little book.

  Charlie certainly didn’t feel like going though page by page, so he turned back to the contents page so see if he had missed any other shorthand notations.

  No others were visible.

  Then something struck his eye. It could only be seen when he held the book a certain way. It was a smudge, maybe a finger mark, over the word ‘Revelation’ on the contents page.

  Revelation, the last book of the Bible, and as best Charlie could remember, the one that described all hell breaking loose.

  His upper lip perspiring, Charlie Grosvenor thumbed to the Bible’s final book and carefully turn its pages until he again came upon two that were stuck together. Carefully pulling them apart, he saw something tucked in between them. It was a yellowed piece of newsprint.

  Dislodging it, he saw that it was a newspaper clipping, quite old and very brittle. A tear on the bottom had been repaired with tape. Holding it as carefully as possible, Charlie began to read, his head unconsciously shaking back and forth as he did so.

  “Lord have mercy,” he whispered when he was done.

  ****

  Gunnar Fesche’s jaw hurt like hell, and his lower teeth ached. He hoped the guy who had given him the pile-driver uppercut had broken his goddamned hand in the process.

  Still, he was not sorry he didn’t finish the job then and there. The hit had to be done the right way, and dropping a mark in front of two witnesses, both of whom could see his face, was not the right way.

  But what was it with this damn woman?

  She was like a cat with nine lives.

  Or could it be him? Christ, was he subconsciously screwing up because he’d never before had to take out a woman? Fesche rejected that idea. A job was a job. Period.

  Sitting in his car, across the street from the soon-to-be-dead woman’s apartment, he wished he had an ice pack for his chin. Even wrapping the ice from a fast-food restaurant coke in a handkerchief would help. Maybe he should just go the hell back to his hotel, soak his face in a sink full of ice, and come back another day. Cantone might not be happy, but Cantone’s jaw didn’t feel like it had been hit with a tire iron.

  So focused was Gunnar Fesche on his own problem that he almost missed the Rios woman and her Feddy friend leaving the apartment building. The bastard hardly looked the worse for wear.

  They went down to a black Audi parked on the street and got in, the guy behind the wheel. As the car pulled away from the curb, Fesche started his own vehicle up and followed them. Wherever they were going, he’d be right behind.

  CHAPTER 14

  Ramona Rios showed up at the building owned by Charlie Grosvenor a little after six.

  Fleer had driven her, though he opted not to go on and meet the man. He said it was safer that way.

  When Charlie answered the door, he did a double take.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Charlie, I need a place to bunk.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s not safe staying at my apartment.”

  She filled him in on what had transpired that day, and he said, “Damn, girl, get in here.”

  Once they were inside, she said, “I can sleep on the couch. It’s no problem.”

  “No, I’ve had somebody just move out, so there’s an empty unit upstairs,” he told her. “It’s not the Ritz, but it gets the job done.”

  “What do you mean you have an empty unit? You make it sound like you own this … oh, my god, you do, don’t you?”

  “I own this place, and a few others around downtown,” he said, “and I don’t do it to make money. I lose money, and it don’t matter. I’m independently wealthy. Someday I’ll tell you why, along with my full name, but Charlie still sticks. Now, do you want the unit or not?”

  “Uh, yes, please.”

  “Fine. You can stay there as long as you want. I see you don’t have any kind of a bag, though.”

  She held up her purse. “This is it for now. I can sneak back and get things later.”

  Or just live like us, wearing the same clothes until they have to be surgically separate from our bodies, Charlie thought, but he said nothing.

  Pooch came up to her, looking apprehensive, but slowly wagging his tail.

  “Who’s this, Charlie?”

  “That’s Pooch. He’s just moved in, too. Don’t ask me how or why, I just live here.”

  Ramona held her hand out to Pooch, who sniffed it, and then rolled over on his back. She rubbed his belly and his tail began to conduct Sousa.

  “What a sweet dog!” she said.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, “he’s just one of today’s surprises.”

  “What else happened?”

  “I know who Jimmy was. And I know his secret.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Read it in the Good Book.”

  She shook her head. “Okay. Mind if I use your bathroom before you start preaching?”

  Charlie smiled. “I ain’t gonna preach. The jakes’s through that door, there.”

  When Ramona returned, Charlie asked her to sit down in the living room. He then told her the story of obtaining Jimmy MacLendon’s Bible … and Pooch … and how he found an underlined message in Proverbs. Then he handed her the newspaper clipping.

  ‘Deadly hit-and-run on Sunset’ the headline read.

  ‘Los Angeles – The body of a twenty-three-year-old woman was found dead early this morning on the Rustic Canyon area of Sunset Boulevard, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run accident. Police say injuries suffered by Deborah Questal, a UCLA student, were commensurate with her having been struck and run over by a vehicle moving at a high rate of speed.

  Yesterday’s unexpected rainstorm is thought to be a factor in the accident, which is believed to have happened between one and two a.m., according to Sgt. Steve Turcott of the LAPD’s Western Division. “We are encouraging anyone who might have seen, or even heard something pertaining to this tragedy to contact the police or the county sheriff’s department,” Turcott said.’

  “You think Jimmy knew something about this hit-and-run?” Ramona asked.

  “I think poor old Jim was in the car that hit her,” Charlie said. “I think he was with somebody and they hit the woman and then fled the scene, and Jimmy was forced to keep his mouth shut about it, or maybe paid to keep his mouth shut. I think the guilt haunted him for years. And here’s why I think that.” He handed the papers on which he’d translated the message to Ramona. “See if you agree with that conclusion.”

  “My god, this is creepy,” she said, setting the pages down. “This other person in the car, the rich guy, I don’t suppose Jimmy spelled his name out, or anything, did he?”

  “I don’t think identifying him was Jimmy’s aim. I don’t think he expected anyone else to find this. I think this was a personal message to himself, maybe to read or recite over again, like all that stuff the Catholics make you say to wash the sin blackboard clean.”

  “Father Carreras never puts it quite that way.”

  “Oh, sorry if I offended you.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a pretty good metaphor, actually.”

  She picked up the newspaper clipping again and turned it over.

  “Governor, did you look at the back?” she asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “The date of the newspaper is here. It’s been folded over.” With a fingernail, she carefully lifted a paper panhandle from the top of clipping and straightened it. “June 30, 1975. Thirty years ago. Could this be the reason Jimmy was killed? Because he knew about this?”


  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. You’re probably too young to even know what that means.”

  “It was an old TV game show, wasn’t it?”

  Charlie looked impressed. “Yeah. I thought you had to be my age to know that.”

  “I took a broadcast history class in college.”

  “You know, I’ve been worrying so much about my discovery I haven’t been a very good host. I don’t get a lot of practice. Do you want something to drink? I have soda, milk, or I can make coffee.”

  “Water’s fine.”

  Charlie got a bottle from the fridge and handed it to her.

  “Now, then,” he said, “since we’re talking about murders, what’s all this about someone shooting at you?”

  “It seems I’m on the mayor’s hit-list,” she said.

  “The mayor? Of Los Angeles? Richard Riordan wants you dead?”

  “No, Charlie, Riordan’s been gone four years. The current mayor is Alberto Soto. I guess you don’t vote.”

  “I don’t. But the mayor putting a contract out on somebody, damn, that’s pretty extreme.”

  She took a sip of water and affected an expression that indicated deep thought. Then she said, “I know. The FBI agent who saved my life – he’s the one who brought me here, by the way, and he’s probably outside somewhere, waiting for me to come out – anyway, he said the Bureau has been investigating Soto for quite a while because of alleged ties to a Mexican drug cartel. He seems to think that Phoenix Terrace, that Downtown development that Nick Cantone is developing, is being built on a piece of property that Soto was eyeing to put up his own hotel, which would be a money-laundering venue for the Mexican mob. Michael – that’s the agent’s name, Michael Fleer – said that my reporting on the project meant I was getting close to the truth, so I had to be eliminated.”