Death Walks Skid Row Read online

  “All over the city. One even in Santa Monica,” Yamahiro answered.

  “And over how long a period of time?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?”

  Yamahiro pointed to one photo in particular. “This is the first we received. Your fellow is the most recent.”

  “Why didn’t you contact us before there were five?”

  “I did. Up until now, no one else seemed to care.”

  Knight sat down in the room’s guest chair and exhaled audibly. “So, according to this, we’ve got some nut running all through the city, maybe even the county, stabbing homeless men.”

  “Seems that way,” the medical examiner said.

  “There’s no way this is coincidence, is there?”

  Yamahiro shook his head. “In the notes I made upon each examination, I noticed that each time there was evidence of the attacker twisting the knife once it had been inserted into the abdomen. The damage to the tissue is identical in every case.”

  “A serial killer who specializes in bums. Christ.”

  “What better way to remain invisible than to kill invisible victims?”

  “And who knows how long he’s been at it?” Knight added. “I mean, we have evidence of five, but how many others might there have been that weren’t connected, or even discovered?”

  Yamahiro shrugged, then looked up at Knight with a patient smile. “The larger question would seem to be … how many more will there be in the future?”

  “I trust you will keep me informed of any new ones that come in. Even if they’re not in my jurisdiction.”

  “Of course.”

  “Great.” Knight rose from the chair and took a final glance at the photos. “I’ll need any paperwork you have on these guys, too.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Okay, Ben.” Knight held out his hand which the other man shook. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t exactly thank you for dropping this on me.”

  “I thought it was something that should not be ignored.”

  “Yeah. It’s just too bad that none of these poor bastards will ever realize that someone is finally not ignoring them. I’ll find my way out.”

  Knight headed back toward the entrance of the building, passing the gift shop on the way. Only in L.A. does the county morgue have a souvenir store. He was going to have to report what Yamahiro had shown him to his lieutenant, but he could not predict the outcome. How do you convince a bureaucracy to find a way to protect people that nobody wanted protected in the first place?

  ****

  Ramona Rios looked at the man across the desk with murder in her eyes. “You can’t do this,” she said with dangerous quiet.

  “I’m sorry, Ramona,” Jason Hulme said, “but we have to maximize our resources here at the station. In talking it over with Bob, we have decided that you will be best utilized on Sunday mornings.”

  “When no one watches,” she said, looking back and forth between Hulme, the station manager, and Robert Bauman, the news director. Bauman looked slightly uncomfortable, though Hulme, behind the veneer of professionalism, appeared to be enjoying himself. Even though the air conditioning in Hulme’s enormous office was on full blast, she felt warm. She turned her gaze at the paunchy, prematurely white-haired man who had been KPAC’s news honcho for nearly a quarter-century. “Bob, I’m the best field reporter you have, and you know it.”

  Bauman kept his eyes down. “That’s why we want you on weekends,” he said. “We want to beef up the weekend coverage.”

  “That’s bull and you know it,” she charged.

  “Frankly, Ramona, I don’t understand your reluctance,” Hulme said smoothly. He was a carrot-haired Brit who had been at the station a little over a year, having been installed by ComCorp, the media conglomerate that had taken over the station last year. Hulme’s task was to transform the indie broadcaster into a serious competitor for L.A.’s CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox affiliates. “This is a chance to work your way into the anchor chair.”

  “The weekend anchor chair.”

  “It’s still an anchor position,” Bauman said.

  “It’s a second-string anchor position.”

  Hulme leaned back in his leather executive chair. “My dear Ms. Rios, you have been with this station exactly five months, during which time your work has been of a consistently high quality. We are very pleased with what you’ve been doing, but let’s not get carried away. You really think you can waltz into a weeknight anchor job after only five months in the field?”

  “Jaac DuPree did field work for three years before becoming anchor,” Bauman said.

  “Exactly,” Hulme went on. “Here we are trying to put you on the fast track, and all you can do is complain about it.”

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “You want to give me the weekend anchor chair, fine. There’s no reason I can’t do that and my regular weekday field work both.”

  “Ramona, please—” Bauman began, but Hulme silenced him with a gesture. Leaning forward in his chair, the station manager glared at the reporter in silence until she blinked and looked away. “Look at me, Ms. Rios,” he demanded, forcing her gaze back. “You seem to be under the impression that this is negotiable. It is not. You are being moved to weekends. That is our decision.”

  She attempted to glare back, but Hulme’s stare was too cold to hold. “Robert,” she said, turning to the news director, “is this really your decision, too?”

  “Well, you know, Ramona—”

  Hulme cut him off again. “We are in agreement.”

  “This is not fair,” she said, her voice now taking on a beaten tone. “I’m the one who broke the story about the homeless being bused out of Skid Row for that dedication ceremony, the same story that the Times picked up and ran with for the next week. I deserve better than weekends.”

  “Enough!” Hulme shouted, startling both Ramona and Bauman. “Bob, if you can’t control your people any better than this, maybe it’s time your duties change as well!”

  “Look, Jason—”

  Hulme stood up and leaned over his desk with one hand, while jabbing an index finger at his office door. “Ramona, half the people out there would get on their knees before me for this kind of opportunity! Meeting’s over, get out of here!”

  Ramona stared back at him. “So that’s what this is really about.”

  “What’s really what this is about?”

  “Sexual harassment. You heard him, Robert. He wants me on my knees in front of him.”

  “Not a word, Bauman,” Hulme commanded. “That is an outright misrepresentation of my words, not to mention slanderous. If you have any intention of working here at all, in any capacity, Ms. Rios, you will apologize this instant.”

  “Apologize?” she cried, leaping out of her chair. “Okay, how’s this: I’m sorry I ever came to this amateur station! You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!”

  Hulme laughed. “My dear, I spent the better part of yesterday with our legal team, and do you know what they told me? They said your contract isn’t worth rolling up and using for a tampon. So don’t presume to threaten me.”

  Shaking with anger, Ramona turned and stormed toward the office door.

  “You leave this way and you leave ComCorp for good,” Hulme said.

  “Fine. I don’t need ComCrap!” she shouted.

  Wrenching the door open, she strode through and swung it shut behind her so violently that one of Hulme’s framed pictures fell from the wall.

  “Mother of God, Jason,” Bauman said, looking shocked, “what was that about?”

  Hulme was smiling a cobra’s smile. “It was about dealing with a problem. No more Rios, no more problem.”

  “You knew she wouldn’t accept the weekend gig.”

  “Of course I did. I know her type. Just like I know your type.”

  “My type?”

  “Look, Robbo, had I fired her outright, she could have cried wrongful termination, and she might have gotten someon
e to listen. This way, she walked out on her own. I might even be able to sue her.”

  “But she’s a damned good reporter—”

  “There are hundreds of damned good reporters who would kill to work in a major market. We don’t need any prima donnas.”

  “Do we need lawsuits?”

  “What lawsuits are those?”

  Bauman blinked at his boss as though he had suddenly turned into an alien. “Was I the only one who heard the threat of a sexual harassment lawsuit?”

  Still smiling, Hulme came around the desk and put his arm around the shorter, older man. “Robbo, she can try to sue us for anything she wants. Wrongful termination, sexual harassment, discrimination, whatever. You think any attorney she could produce would stand a chance against ComCorp’s legal team? Gloria Allred would roll on her back and say and ‘thank you’ by the time our boys were done. We made Rios a good-faith offer of potential career advancement, and she blew up and made some wild accusations, simple as that. It’s not like she hasn’t got a track record of stepping on toes around here, all of which is documented in her personnel file.”

  “Maybe she’s a little too ambitious for her own good, but did you have to give her the get-on-your-knees line? Followed by a tampon crack?”

  “C’mon, Robbo, that’s how you pray. At least that’s how I pray. Your people, I don’t know.”

  Bauman gaped at him. “Did you just say ‘my people’? What’s that supposed to mean, my people? You mean Jews? Is that it?”

  Hulme’s hand squeezed tighter on Bauman’s shoulder. “What I’m trying to impress upon you is that conversations are funny things. I say ‘your people,’ and you hear anti-Semitism. But here’s the salient point. Even if I were to call you a washed-up Jew bastard, there’s no one here to verify it. With only two people in a conversation, it’s one person’s word against another’s.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Bauman said. “But you’re forgetting that I was here when you were talking to Ramona. I was the witness. I can offer verification.”

  “But you won’t.”

  “I’m not going to lie for you.”

  “Who said anything about lying for me? Did I say anything about lying?” He let go of Bauman and returned to his desk. “By the way, Robert, how old are you?”

  “How old?”

  “Yeah, you know, your age? The amount of time you’ve been breathing on your own?”

  “I’m sixty-four, why?”

  “Hmmmm,” Hulme muttered. “Early retirement age.”

  “I have no intention of retiring.”

  “Of course not. Thing is, I had a memo from corporate a week ago about mandatory retirement age for employees. Naturally, I’d hate to lose you, but you know corporate. They make a decision, it’s out of my hands. I could, of course, fight to keep you, tell them you’re irreplaceable, all that sort of crap. But I’d have to have something in return.”

  Robert Bauman desperately wanted a scotch and water as he calculated the price of his soul. “What do you want?” he asked.

  “You’re loyalty, Robbo. The assurance you’re a team player.”

  “I … you know I’m part of the team, Jason,” Bauman said, softly.

  “Of course I do,” Hulme replied, grinning. “And I’ll communicate that to corporate. Oh, Christ, I almost forgot, hold on a minute.” Hulme grabbed the phone and buzzed his secretary. “Keisha, get Dexter on the line, would you?”

  Aaron Dexter was head of security for the station.

  When Keisha buzzed back, he jabbed another button and said: “Dex, Jason. I need someone to walk Ramona Rios out of the building. Right, this is her last day. Get all her keys, her card key, everything, and I want her parking spot painted over by tomorrow morning. Get on it right away.” He hung up and turned back to Bauman. “I think we’re done here, Robbo.”

  Bauman was looking at his watch. “It’s 3:45, Jason. We’re on the air at 5:00, and I was planning on running Ramona’s piece on the food bank.”

  “Is it good?”

  “Yes, it’s good.”

  “Then by all means run it. Let’s have her go out on a high note. Tell you what, why don’t you write a little note for DuPree about how we’re all going to miss our little Ramona and we wish her the best of luck for her future career, yibbity-yibbity-yibbity. Now go on, get back to work.”

  Bauman was only too glad to be get out of Hulme’s office. Just get me through to seven o’clock, he thought, and then get me a nice double Dewars. But at the door he turned back. “You know something, Jason?” he said. “I started in this business right when Nixon became president. My early career was shaped by stories like Vietnam and Watergate.”

  “Lovely,” Hulme said, “but is there a point?”

  “Yeah. The point is, a lot of people get into journalism, get their feet wet, maybe get their arm hairs singed a little bit, and then get the hell out. I stayed in it, chiefly so I could go after people like you.”

  Hulme smiled. “Well, isn’t it amazing how age changes one?”

  “Yeah,” Bauman said, turning back toward the door. “Isn’t it?”

  ****

  By this time, Ramona Rios was all the way down the hall. She stopped to get a drink from the drinking fountain, and then kicked the wall beside it, accomplishing nothing except hurting her toe, and causing a few people in the hallway to stop talking and look her way. Most, realizing it was Ramona, just smiled and went back about their business.

  She knew the game they were playing, and she knew why, though it depressed her that Robert had gone along with it – unless, of course, he didn’t know what was going to happen. Even so, he knew her well enough to understand that she would never take a demotion, which was what putting her on Sunday mornings amounted to. God, that’s where you started people! This had to be Hulme’s doing, and it had to be a result of her ad-libbing on the Skid Row development story, which had prompted some vehement pushback from both Nick Cantone’s office and Assemblyman Henry.

  But she was reporting the news, dammit. The Times piece had confirmed it. And she had been there first.

  Looking up, Ramona saw Aaron Dexter, for whom she had developed an early dislike, and two uniformed security guards, coming her way. She doubted they were simply going to the water fountain. Dexter, a very large African-American with a shaved head and a neatly trimmed moustache, stepped up to her and smiled. “Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it has to be, sugar,” he said.

  “Funny thing, Aaron,” she said, smiling back, “I was about to say the same thing to you. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be personally named in the lawsuit I’m planning to file against this station.”

  The smile on Dexter’s face fell away. “I’m just following orders.”

  “Oh, I know that, but you’re also enjoying it, aren’t you? You’re going to really enjoy throwing me off the lot.”

  “Let’s get going.”

  “I have to get my stuff from my cubicle.”

  With the two guards puppy-dogging behind them, Dexter led Ramona down the hall. She knew that she was probably not going to file an actual suit. The truth was she did not have the kind of money to hire a high-powered attorney. A good chunk of her salary from the station went to support her mother and younger brothers. But maybe the threat alone would raise enough sweat from both Aaron and Hulme to make the bluff worthwhile.

  On the way to her cubicle in the newsroom, they passed Larry Frank. “You were right, Larry,” Ramona called out, “I should have kept my mouth shut. They’re throwing me out.”

  “I’m sorry, Ramona,” he called back.

  After collecting all of her personal belongings from her cubicle and putting them in a box (which, Ramona noticed, had conveniently appeared on her desk), she let Dexter walk her down to personnel, where she was instructed to sign a series of forms (which had also miraculously been prepared in advance – Hulme’s micromanaging technique was nothing if not thorough). For the first time, Ramona wondered what would have happene
d had she simply accepted the weekend demotion and gone back to her work. Would that have derailed the plans to get rid of her, or would it simply have delayed the inevitable?

  But she had not accepted it. She had done precisely what Hulme was expecting her to do, was counting on her doing.

  Outside in the parking lot, she relinquished her parking card and was walked to her car, a four-year-old Mustang convertible that she had bought used and paid cash for. It was still a hot day. She dumped the box in the passenger seat and climbed in.

  “Ramona,” Aaron Dexter said, “you can either believe this or call B.S. on it, but I’m not enjoying this at all.”

  Putting on a pair of sunglasses, Ramona looked up at him. “You know something, Aaron? You were never my favorite person, but neither do I think you’re a bad guy.” She put her key in the ignition and started the Mustang up. “So I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Jason Hulme has any loyalty to anything or anybody but the shareholders. So you watch your back, big man. You might want to invest in a Kevlar vest.”

  Throwing her car into reverse, Ramona Rios peeled out of the parking spot, and sped toward the gate.

  From his glass-walled corner office, Jason Hulme looked down into the parking lot and watched as Ramona’s Mustang blazed through the gate for the last time and then disappear down the street. He smiled. A moment later, his intercom buzzed and Keisha’s voice said: “I have Mr. Cantone on line one.”

  Going back to his desk, Hulme jabbed the line, picked up the receiver and said, “Hey, Nick, how are you? Yeah, that’s why I’m calling. Problem solved, she’s gone. Yep, almost as though it was scripted. No, don’t worry, she’s history. She’ll be lucky to get a gig doing the weather on Telemundo, I’m seeing to that. Yeah. Tennis this weekend? Good. See you then.”

  As Jason Hulme replaced the phone, he thought: I wish all problems were this easy.

  CHAPTER 4

  The horns of three cars blared as the elderly street man dragged himself slowly and painfully across the street, against the light, pushing the metal walker inches ahead of him with every step. The man ignored the cars as if they weren’t there. Morning rush hour meant nothing to him. By the time he made it to the opposite curb, the light had changed back to red. One of the drivers, in a Lexus, angrily shouted an epithet through the window as he rolled through the red light.