Death Walks Skid Row Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  The middle-aged, gray-haired, bushy-bearded African American street man strode onto his familiar corner. The sun was high in the sky and it was a hot day, but the weather mattered little in terms of the man’s wardrobe. He would have worn the same old, frayed green slacks, once-white shirt, and scuffed, faded leather jacket no matter whether it was triple-digit Fahrenheit, pouring rain or snowing. Of course, it never did the latter in Los Angeles. Strangely, though, even though the man wore the same clothing day after day, month after month, year after year, his clothes never gave off the same reek of sweat and filth as did the clothing of so many other denizens of the streets. Those on Skid Row who knew him – and there were many – could not explain this phenomenon, if they were even cognizant enough to care. It was just one of the mysteries that surrounded the man known only as ‘the Governor’.

  He had just made it out of the alley beside the Star Liquor Mart on Seventh when the young man who called himself Aspen came running up to him. “Hey, Governor, you don’t happen to have a quarter on you, do you?” Aspen asked.

  Nobody knew if Aspen was actually his name or the place from whence he had come. He was tall, strapping, blond, and blue-eyed, and had only shown up on Skid Row sometime in the last week.

  “A quarter, you say?” the Governor replied.

  “Yeah, so I can get a few smokes. Mario in the store there sells them three for a buck, and I’ve got the seventy-five already, so I need another quarter.”

  “And you’re coming to me?”

  “C’mon, man, you always seem to have a little spare change.”

  Reaching into his pants pocket, the Governor withdrew a quarter, which glinted like platinum in the sun. Before handing it to the kid, he turned it over and saw that it was one of those special commemorative state quarters – Texas, to be precise. “Haven’t seen this one,” he muttered.

  “What’s special about it?”

  “Oh, it’s one of those fifty state quarters. Texas. I haven’t seen Texas.”

  “Why do they even do that?”

  “I don’t know. Makes them collectable, I guess.”

  “Collectable,” Aspen sneered, taking the coin from him. “Some folks got so much money they can collect it. It ain’t fair.”

  “Life ain’t fair, son,” the Governor replied.

  “Yeah, well, thanks, man.” The young man slipped the coin into the pocket of his dirty jeans and headed for the liquor store.

  Something about Aspen fascinated the Governor. Wherever he had come from, whatever situation it was that had deposited him on the streets, it must have been hard and dispiriting, because the man actually seemed happy to be where he was. That was not unknown, of course. Many of the guys, and even some of the women, lived on the streets by choice. They were escaping a harsh or crippling environment, or thought they were, or else had not realized that the environment was within their own mind, and the extreme realities of street life only made it seem like they were escaping. Others, of course, were not in their own minds. They should be institutionalized or hospitalized, or at least under constant medical supervision; instead they were turned out to fend for themselves in the name of “shrinking government.” But none of that seemed to apply to Aspen. His was a different story, and someday the Governor would get it, the way he got everybody’s story, eventually.

  Aspen was now coming out of the Star Liquor Mart puffing happily away one on one of his illicit smokes. The Governor was about to let Aspen go about his business when he saw the young man stop suddenly. Even from a distance of a city block, the Governor could tell that he was tensing. There was probably a police presence down there and the kid wasn’t used to it yet. He was looking at something, something the Governor couldn’t see. Something that was in the alley between a flophouse apartment building and a vacant building that used to be a cleaners (back when people in the area had the money and ambition to stay clean). Slowly, Aspen started stalking whatever it was – cautiously, the way a cat will stalk something that it cannot quite see, ever-ready to spring back should it prove to be dangerous or threatening. The Governor’s complete attention was now on the younger street man. He started sauntering his way, just in case Aspen required help. At sixty-one, the Governor was not the greatest help in a fight but he was not useless either.

  As the Governor watched, Aspen crept far enough into the alleyway to disappear from sight. Then the Governor heard a cry, and started jogging toward the young man. He got to the entrance of the alley just in time to see Aspen dash out. When he saw the Governor, he said, “Dead!”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” Aspen directed the older man to a pile of rags leaned up against the side of the apartment building – a pile of rags with the remnants of a man inside. The Governor approached the figure and pushed it with the toe of his battered shoe, and a litter of rats fanned out from it, scurrying over the trash in the alley. The figure reeked of human waste and urine, which might ordinarily be an indication that one was looking at a dead body, but not on the streets where many people reeked of human waste and urine. Kneeling down, the Governor took the figure’s hand and felt for a pulse.

  Pulse be damned; nobody could be that cold and still be alive.

  “Do you know who it is?” Aspen asked.

  Carefully turning the body toward him, the Governor studied the face. One of the dead man’s eyes was closed and the other open. “Yeah, I know him. It’s Jimmy.”

  “Jimmy who?”

  The Governor looked up at the younger man. “What difference does it make? That’s like asking Aspen who?”

  “All right, all right. Hey, that isn’t the little guy with the gamy eye, is it?”

  “Yep. Jim was blind in one eye. I was always afraid he was going to walk in front of a car because of it.”

  “Maybe that’s what happened.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  The Governor carefully moved the front of Jimmy’s dirt-encrusted army surplus jacket to reveal a shirt that had once been khaki, but was now brown with filth. The bottom half of the shirt, covering the dead man’s belly, was stained red and still damp.

  “Jesus!” Aspen whispered, blanching. “Why would …?”

  The Governor stood up. “You’re new here. Some people out here would try to kill you over a pair of shoes. Some just because their deck’s missing a few aces. People get dropped off in the middle of the night by their hospitals when their insurance runs out. Suddenly they got no meds, and less control. The whys don’t even matter much, son. This is Skid Row, and it’s never a beautiful day in this neighborhood. You want to stay here, you’re going to have to get used to that.”

  “Why do you stay here, then?” Aspen asked.

  The Governor knew damn well why he was here, but he was not about to explain it to the kid. Certainly not now. “Why do you think?” he said, his mouth crinkling into a smile. “My mansion in Beverly Hills is being painted and I can’t stand the smell. Now you stay here with the body. I’ll go find a cop.”

  “How do you even get a cop down here?” Aspen asked as the Governor started walking away.

  “You tell one of these shop owners to call them,” the Governor answered. “Having a dead body lying around the place tends to be bad for business, even on Skid Row.” He walked to the Star Liquor Mart, where Aspen had bought his smokes, and asked the clerk to call the police. But the youngish Pakistani man behind the counter refused, claiming it was none of his business.

  “Look, the cops aren’t going to care if you sell sticks individually under the counter,” the Governor said.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Right, you don’t know. Give me the damn phone then, and I’ll call them.”

  “I have only a cell phone. How do I know you won’t steal it?”

  “Friend, if I wanted to steal something, I’d steal something with street value. Like this.” The Governor picked a twelve-pack of Bud off of a stacked display and starte
d to leave.

  “Stop!” the clerk called. “Stop, you thief!” He leapt over the counter and pulled out his cell phone, and jabbed a button for a pre-set number. “Police!” he cried loudly. “My store is being robbed!”

  As the clerk was giving the address, the Governor smiled, turned back, and set back the twelve-pack. “It’s not robbery unless I leave the premises,” he said, after the clerk had hung up. “Until then I’m just shopping. But thanks for calling the cops like I asked.”

  “Get out! Go away! Do not come back!”

  “Pleasure doing business with you.”

  The Governor strolled back out into the hot day, which somehow seemed to have gotten hotter while he was inside the store, and looked down the street. There was now a collection of people standing around Aspen; some were staring into the alley, some staring off into space, and one leaning heavily on a walker. News traveled fast in Skid Row. Within minutes the police car arrived in front of the store, and the Governor watched as the officer in the shotgun seat got out of the black-and-white. It was Officer Hugo Velasquez, which was both good and bad news. He was about thirty, a shade too old to be a rookie, but still too young to be a veteran. While not a Nazi, Velasquez was not one to be pushed. He’d never been break-your-arm mean, but was not particularly friendly either. There were frown lines on his handsome brown face, which he might have been born with for all the Governor knew, and a small scar above his left eyebrow – a brand from growing up on gang turf.

  Down the street, some of the Row’s denizens began to shuffle away as though they did not want to be spotted committing the crime of existing.

  Velasquez walked up to the Governor, who was standing just outside the market, and glared at him. “Dammit, Gov, don’t tell me you’re the one ripping this place off,” he said.

  “Absolutely not,” the Governor said. “You can search me if you like.”

  “And get fleas? Hell no.”

  By now the driver of the car, an older officer with graying sandy hair, stepped past them and into the market, only to re-emerge a half-minute later. “The clerk phoned in a false alarm,” he told Velasquez. “Waste of time.”

  “Not quite,” the Governor said, directing their attention down the street. “There’s a body down there.”

  “A body?” said the older officer, whose nametag ID’d him as Walpole. “Did you find him or did you kill him?”

  “Neither. That young fellow down there, the blond one, found him.”

  “Streeter?” Velasquez asked.

  The Governor nodded. “New kid on the block. The victim’s been down here for years. Went by the name of Jimmy. I think you’re going to need to bring in homicide on this one.”

  “We are, are we?” Officer Walpole asked. “You going to stick around to make a statement?”

  “Of course,” the Governor answered. “I’ll tell you what I know, but it ain’t much. The young fellow standing down there is the one who found him.”

  Walpole got back into the cruiser, turned on the siren and flashers, and drove down the block to where Aspen was standing. He pulled to the curb again, leaving the lights on, while Velasquez and the Governor followed on foot.

  “You’ll tell us everything you know about this, right?” Velasquez asked.

  “If I knew anything, I’d tell you. You know that. Where’d you get your new partner?”

  “He got himself sent to us from the Valley. I’m not sure what he did to piss off the Valley so badly. What’s your take on the newbie that found the vic?”

  “He calls himself Aspen, and he hasn’t been on any street very long. Pretty green.”

  “You make him as the killer?”

  “Not unless he was an Oscar-winning actor before hitting the Row. He looked like he was going to pass out when he saw blood, and I don’t think he was faking it.”

  Velasquez smiled, though the frown lines did not soften. “Maybe,” he said. “But who knows? There might be more than one Oscar-winner wandering around out here.”

  As they reached the alley now, Officer Walpole was calling for back-up and requesting the medical examiner. “Homicide’s on the way,” Walpole told Velasquez, without looking at him. Neither was he looking at Aspen, though the young man, now over his shock, appeared to hang intently on every word the policeman spoke like he was mentally recording it.

  “What’s the cause of death?” Velasquez asked.

  “Appears to be a knife,” Walpole said. “Good, professional job too, quick and clean.”

  “Why would a professional want to kill a bum?”

  “Not our problem. Homicide’s on the way.”

  A few minutes later an unmarked car pulled up, and a tall, wiry plainclothesman with thinning, sandy hair leapt out and was directed to the body.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Office Walpole told Aspen. “The detective’s going to want to talk with you.”

  After conferring with the two uniformed officers, the sandy-haired man approached Aspen who was standing next to the Governor. “Detective Darrell Knight,” he said, flashing his badge. “I understand that it was you who found the body.”

  “Yeah, I found it,” Aspen replied.

  Knight led him through a series of questions about the discovery, and what he did, and lobbed a few at the Governor as well, mostly routine. Then he said, “Okay, gentlemen, let’s see your hands.”

  “Huh?” Aspen asked.

  “Hands, hands, those things at the end of your arms, with the fingers and all, stick them out.”

  With a muted smile, the Governor did so, palms up. After a second, Aspen followed suit.

  “Turn ’em over,” the detective instructed, and both men did.

  “Yeah, okay. You guys can beat it. Tell your friends to stay away from here, too, until we things sorted out.” With that, Detective Knight turned away and went back to the alley.

  “Come with me,” the Governor said, taking Aspen by the arm and leading him back toward the market.

  “What was that all about?” the young man asked.

  “He was looking for blood. He wanted to see if either of us could have been the killer.”

  “That’s stupid. If I had killed somebody and gotten blood on myself, I’d have washed it off before the cops came.”

  “You would?”

  “Well, sure. Wouldn’t you?”

  The Governor stopped walking and held his hands up in front of Aspen. “What do you see on my hands?” he asked.

  “Dirt, mostly,” the younger man answered. “And calluses.” Then a look of realization played across his face. “Oh, I get it. It’s not possible to wash off blood and leave the dirt, right? So the cop was looking to see if our hands were dirty or recently washed. Is that it?”

  The Governor gave the younger man a long, quizzical stare.

  “What’s the matter?” Aspen asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Just trying to decide about you,” the Governor replied.

  “Decide what? Hey, man, you don’t think I had anything to do with that guy’s death, do you?”

  “I try not to think, son. ’Sides, it’s too damn hot to think.”

  With that, the Governor walked away into the heat of the afternoon, completely unaware that he was, at that moment, being photographed.

  CHAPTER 3

  Two days had passed since finding the body on Skid Row, and while he hadn’t forgotten about the dead homeless guy, Detective Darrell Knight had too many other open cases to lavish a lot of time on that one.

  Having finished his fifth cup of coffee of the morning, Knight had just gotten up from his desk at Central Division to go to the bathroom, when his phone rang. Sighing, he picked it up and said, “Knight, make it quick” into the mouthpiece.

  “Darrell, Ben Yamahiro.” Yamahiro worked in the L.A. County Coroner’s office. “Got a minute?”

  “Can you make it thirty seconds? I’m about to flood the floor.” There was a chuckle at the other end of the line.

  “
I’ll be quick. Can you come down to the morgue?”

  “To see what?”

  “That John Doe who came in a few days ago, the street bum?”

  “What about him?” Knight asked, trying to ignore the serious complaint his bladder was making.

  “I’d rather tell you in person if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay, Ben. I’ll be down later this afternoon.” Knight hung up the phone and rushed away from his desk.

  Since making Detective II four months prior, Knight’s caseload had increased exponentially. He sometimes wondered if all the murderers in the city had not been waiting just for him to get his bump. Leslie, his wife, wondered even more. What he wondered on a daily basis was how much longer Leslie was going to put up with his no longer being around most evenings and weekends.

  Because of the casework that had to be dealt with before he could safely leave the office, it was nearly two hours later before he made it down to coroner’s building in Boyle Heights. Ben Yamahiro, a small man of about forty, who wore TV-sized glasses, was waiting for him. “I didn’t hear about a requisition for canoes at Parker Center,” he joked.

  “No thanks to you,” Knight said. “So what’s up with our John Doe?”

  “There are some things I want to show you.”

  “On the body?”

  “No, back at my office.”

  Once they had arrived at the cluttered office, Yamahiro laid out a series of digital pictures on his desk for Knight to study. “Well, this is him, all right,” the detective said. “I recognize the wound.”

  “How about this one?” Yamahiro asked, laying down another set of pictures. Upon perusing them, Knight frowned.

  “Or these two.”

  “These are all different guys,” Knight said.

  “Mm-hmm. Five in all, and all homeless. You can see now why I contacted you.”

  Even the greenest rookie would have been able to see that the wounds on every one of the corpses in the photos were identical, varying only slightly in their positions on the bodies. But the angle of the cut, the apparent depth, and the size of the opening argued for the exact same weapon, and very likely the same hand wielding the weapon. “Where were the bodies of these others found?”