Wendy Hornsby - Telling Lies

“Be my guest,” he challenged. “She’s being booked into the Metro Detention Center, the new federal lockup on Alameda. Think you can talk your way in?”

“I think it would be a lot easier if I was with a badge.”

He slapped his hand over his heart and grinned at me, “She admits she needs me.”

“Jesus Christ, Flint, it wasn’t a proposal.”

“Ssh,” he said. “Don’t spoil the moment.”

I turned and started walking again so he wouldn’t see me laugh.

Flint was beginning to grow on me. In my line of work, I’ve met a fair share of policemen, a lot of them suits like Flint. Generally, I don’t like them very much. They wear a tough veneer, armor I suppose, to protect the soft spots they manage to hang on to in spite of the shit they see during the ordinary course of their work. Emotional armor may be necessary to survive the job until retirement, but it makes them hard to get close to, too slick to get a solid grip on.

Outwardly, Flint was like his comrades: nosy, cautious, bossy, reactionary, opinionated. He made the proper tough-guy faces, held the right postures, but I suspected that all the time he was asking his questions, doing his cop thing, he was loving every minute. His hair had gone white awfully early in life, but he seemed otherwise unmarked by his dealings with the city’s underside.

Flint hadn’t let the valet park his city car when we arrived. So we had to retrace the long hike into the depths of the hotel garage to fetch it. When the car was in sight, he bumped my arm.

“Say it,” he said. “Say you need me.”

“If that’s all it takes, okay. I need you, Flint. I need you to get me in to Aleda.”

“Okay, we’ll give it a try,” he said. “But first you tell me why the hurry.”

“I don’t know. There just is.”

“There just is?” he said. “How do I write that in the report?”

“You write this, ‘Detective Michael Flint, serial number What’s your serial number?”

“One-five-nine-nine-one.”

“You can fill that in later,” I said. “You write, ‘Detective Michael Flint, after an exhaustive investigation, determined that Aleda Weston, located in the custody of United States Federal Marshals at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center, was a material witness in the shooting of Emily Duchamps.”

“Did we just make another detour into Oz? Aleda was in an airplane somewhere over the breadbasket when Emily was shot.”

“I bet you breakfast that if you check long-distance telephone records, you’ll find some nice long chats between Emily’s number and the general neighborhood of Aleda’s most recent digs.”

“Think so?”

“I just bet on it, didn’t I?”

“If you’re so damned smart, tell me what they were talking about.”

“The timing of this little reunion. Aleda and Emily were very close until Aleda went underground. I know they worked this all out together.”

He thought about it, frowning. “You can’t be thinking that Emily expected Aleda to come and pour the coffee. They had to know she would be in custody for a while.”

I took his arm. “Let’s just ask her, shall we?”

Still he hesitated. “Do you eat big breakfasts?”

“Huge,” I said. “This one will really cost you.”

“We’ll see.” He unlocked the car. “Vamanos.”

The car was cold when we got in. The windshield steamed up as soon as Flint turned on the heater. Flint smeared it around a little with his coat sleeve. I couldn’t see anything out of my side. He strained forward as he drove us up out of the garage, trying not to hit any concrete pillars. He was awfully quiet again. He had turned down his dispatch radio so that we heard only a female-voiced hum over the sound of the engine and of tires squealing on the slick driveway. I kicked off my shoes and put my damp feet against the heater vents and tried to sort things out.

I had planned to stop by the hospital to see Emily. When I called Dr. Song before leaving Max’s room, he told me my parents had arrived. My father, he said, was sedated and sleeping in the doctors’ lounge. The nurses had set up a cot in Em’s room for my mother. If, by some chance, Mother had managed to fall asleep, my arrival would awaken her. She had to be exhausted. I wanted to see her, but, as Dr. Song had warned me, we were in for a long haul. Mom and Dad needed their rest. I could wait until morning. I prayed Emily held on that long.

The Metropolitan Detention Center sits next to the Holly-wood Freeway, a cruel, transient view for the prisoners locked inside.

Flint parked in what he called city parking-a red zone in front of the building. He hung the microphone of his police radio over his rearview mirror to fend off parking cops.

The streets were deserted-downtown L.A. dies when the commuters go home for the night. Other than a few dark shapes sleeping in protected recesses around the entrance, there was no one around. Not even a news van in sight.

The detention center building is new. It looks more like a postmodern hotel than a prison. At least on the outside. The reception area beyond the front door is hard and polished and austere beyond any need.

There were two federal corrections officers manning the front desk. Flint handed his police photo ID to the older officer, a thin, balding man in his mid-thirties.

“Detective Flint,” he said. “LAPD. Major Crimes Section.”

“Officer Clark. Guest registration,” the officer said, handing back Flint’s ID. “I can recommend the accommodations, sir, but we don’t offer room service.”

Flint laughed politely. “Quiet night, huh?”

“Up here it is,” Clark said. By now they were both leaning companionably on the desk. I might as well have been invisible. “New guest has things hopping in the booking area.”

“Would that be Aleda Weston?”

Clark nodded. “Our star boarder.”

“Is she processed in?”

“They’re still at it. You want to talk to her, you’ll have to wait.

“Who’s the assigned federal attorney?”

“Ricardo Valenti.”

“Richie Valenti?” Flint raised his brows. “Is he in the building?”

“Believe he is. You know Richie?”

“Hell yes.” Flint grinned. “We been tangling for a long time.” Clark grinned his own grin and leaned closer to Flint, expectant. “Yeah?”

“He ever tell you about Senora Magdalena?”

“He never did.” Clark turned to a second officer, an Opie-esque, freckle-faced redhead. “Hey, Ernie, Detective Flint here was on the Magdalena thing with Richie Valenti.”

“Yeah?” Ernie joined them. “How’d that go down?”

“Classic lawyer fuckup,” Flint said. “Can’t blame Richie, though. You ever see Senora Magdalena?”

“Nice, huh?”

“Beautiful. Little bitty thing. Couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. And tight all over. You know the type?”

Flint’s listeners, lifted from their nightwatch boredom, pressed closer, waiting for more. I stood back a little, an interloper, and watched Flint work. He was good, with subtle hand gestures and facial expressions that said more than his words. This was male bonding at its richest.

“Beautiful little thing,” Flint repeated. “And young. In this country we would have called her marriage statutory rape. How she hooked up with Senor Magdalena I can’t figure. Except he was rich. What was he, Colombian trade consul or something? Anyway, he was older than shit and just about as ugly. I think Richie got a look at him and started to feel sorry for the linda senora. Stupid ass, huh?”

“Typical lawyer,” Clark chuckled. “Dumb shit.”

Flint cast me a sidelong leer. “Guess we shouldn’t talk about a pending federal case in front of a potential witness, right?” The two listeners swiveled to look at me.