Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

Marovich fixed the knot in his tie as he studied me, memorized me. “Nice meeting you.”

“LaShonda DeBevis,” I said. “Get me access to LaShonda DeBevis.”

“I don’t have her,” he said. He walked away shielded by the considerable mass of old Roddy.

“You’d have made a good she-wolf,” I said to Roddy as I gathered my things, “the way you watch over your cubs.”

“I do what it takes,” he said. “Anything it takes.”

“Anything?” I asked.

“What’s on your mind?”

“George Schwartz. How far will you have him go?”

“Schwartz, you say?” Roddy turned his hands up. “Never heard of the guy. Nice talking to you, MacGee. I gotta go to work.”

All the way home, I tried to sort what I knew from what I surmised. As always, the first column was tremendously shorter than the second.

Mike was in the kitchen with the telephone against his ear and a pencil poised above a notebook. The stills I had taken the night before were spread out on the table, along with stills made from Guido’s videotape. I picked one up, a blow-up of the back end of a car. The quality was flat and fuzzy, but I could read the license plate. I could read license plates in eight or ten other shots as well.

“When did you see Guido?” I asked.

“Didn’t. I talked to him this morning. He had this stuff sent over while we were at the game. For a commie, your Guido’s damn smart. Hector says hi.”

“Me, too,” I said. “And Guido isn’t a commie. He’s a democrat.”

“Same thing.”

“I’m a democrat.”

If he heard me, he didn’t bother to retort. He was back on the phone with Hector. I got a soda from the refrigerator and drank it while I eavesdropped. Mike would read a license number to Hector on the phone. Hector was, I presumed, plugging the numbers into the Department of Motor Vehicles computer and sending back to Mike the names and addresses of the owners.

I rested my arm across Mike’s shoulders and watched him write Ozzie Freemantle, 1931 112th Street. He thanked Hector and hung up.

I asked, “Can’t Hector draw a suspension for unauthorized use of the files?”

“If he does, I’ll make it up to him. Anyway, who’s gonna beef him? Hec is a homicide dick working a case.”

“But you’re not.”

Mike pulled me down to his lap. “But who’s gonna tell?”

“Me,” I said. “I just bawled out the district attorney for not playing by the rules. You think I’m going to live with cheating in my own home?”

“Damn right. If I’m a cheater, you’ll live with it.”

“You’re pretty sure of yourself, Mike Flint.” I nestled my face into the soft crook of his neck and closed my eyes while he rocked me. I felt sleep-deprived and would have been very happy to spend the next eight or so hours right there on his lap. “Pretty damn sure of yourself.”

“Tell me about the D.A.”

I yawned. “Later, okay? I have to be up early to get Casey to school. I’m going to bed now.”

“I’m off, remember? I’ll drive Casey.”

“Okay, but one condition.” I managed to stand up. “If anyone follows you, I don’t want you to beat him up until after you have dropped off my baby. Got it?”

“Got it.” He laughed.

I took him by the hand and gave him a pull. “Come on. Bedtime for cheaters.”

Etta didn’t call Wednesday morning. I thought maybe she was still partying with Baby Boy. Or maybe he had worn her out so that she couldn’t drag herself down the street to a pay phone. Whatever the reason Etta didn’t call, I was relieved to be saved the long detour into Southeast L.A.

At eight-thirty, when I got on the freeway, the air was already hot and the sky was a ridiculously showy blue. The day’s ration of smog still hovered in a low, dense brown layer along the ocean horizon, waiting for a change in the wind. At the tail end of morning rush hour, traffic down the Hollywood Freeway to Guido’s house was heavy but moving steadily.

According to the news on the radio, the pro-Conklin demonstrators outside Parker Center had grown both in number and in volume. The police department had asked all of its workers to enter the building through the guarded, covered garage on San Pedro Street for their own safety. Two members of the police commission had nearly come to blows during last night’s meeting called to discuss how the department would proceed. I turned the radio off.

Guido lives in a rugged canyon behind the Hollywood Bowl, his small gem of a house surrounded by groves of eucalyptus and dusty pine. Though he is only ten minutes from the festering armpit of the city-his description-once you turn off Highland Avenue and start up his winding road you are deep in wilderness. So, okay, maybe it’s an illusion of wilderness and locals dump their bodies off the side of his road with scary regularity. Still, at night coyotes howl at the moon from the rise behind his house.

When I crested the top of his steep drive, I found Guido sitting on his front step in a patch of sunlight. Lazily, he got to his feet.

“I was sitting here thinking,” he said, sauntering over as I got out of my car, “how nice it would be to drive up the coast today, maybe stop somewhere north of Malibu for a late breakfast. There’s an antique camera store around Oxnard somewhere. Maybe it’s in Ojai. I’ve been meaning to check it out. It’s gorgeous up there this time of year, orange trees in blossom everywhere.”

“Nice try,” I said. “It took me three days of fast talking to get permission to bring the equipment into Juvenile Hall. I don’t want to go through that again, even for orange blossoms. Tell you what, though. When we’re finished with Tyrone, I’ll you over to Lawry’s California for huevos rancheros. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Can’t.” He sighed dramatically. “They closed it down a couple of years ago. By the time I get to Ojai, the camera store will probably be long gone, too. Listen to me, Maggie, carpe diem. “

“I like that.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “How about, Time and tide wait for no man, but Tyrone waits for us.”

He bowed to me. “I’ll put my shit in the car.”

Central Juvenile Hall is on the Eastside, in Lincoln Heights. The facility sits behind the massive County-USC Medical Center, sharing a dismal asphalt peninsula isolated by a freeway interchange on two sides and the Southern Pacific freight yards on the third. Leftover land for human refuse: Central Juvenile is the Big House for kids, where the hardest of the peachfuzz hardcore being tried for murder as adults are kept. There are some real mean little mothuhfuckuhs, to borrow from Etta-or, as the county labels them, unfit minors-locked up behind the block walls and barbed wire. The guards aren’t armed and kids break out all the time.

Guido and I, lugging about a hundred and fifty pounds of equipment between us, were shown into Administration instead of the visitor center. We were escorted into a small conference room and searched until the deputy probation officers were satisfied that we had nothing that looked like lethal weapons and no keys to the front door hidden about our persons. We had already purged our gear. Over the years, and in various parts of the hemisphere, Guido and I had both been through some form of the search drill dozens of times. It can be the price you pay for access to the right subject.

Camera, lights, sound were in place half an hour before Tyrone was led in. When he came through the door we saw, to our dismay, that he had neither handcuffs nor shackles. I had expected the deputy probation officer to stay; they usually do. But for some reason, he went out and waited in the hall. Both Guido and I winced when we heard the conference room door close behind him, leaving us alone with six feet four inches of first-time killer.