Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

I said, “Senor McConnell?”

The youngest guy nodded toward the trailer. A late-model Cadillac Eldorado was parked next to it between the trees. “He's inside. You want me to get him for you?”

“That's okay. Thanks.”

McConnell came out as I was crunching across the gravel. He was in his sixties, with a large gut hanging over khaki trousers and Danner work boots. An unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt let the gut show like he was proud of it. He held a Negro Modelo beer in the dark bottle, but he offered his free hand. “Mike McConnell. You Mr. Cole?”

“Yes, sir. Please, call me Elvis.”

He laughed. “Don't know as I could do that with a straight face.”

What do you say to something like that?

“I'd invite you in, but it's hotter in there than out here. You want a beer? All I got is this Mexican shit. Fresh out of American.”

“No, sir. But thanks.”

A slim Chicana who couldn't have been more than twenty appeared in the trailer's door and frowned out at him. Somebody had sprayed a thin cotton print dress over her body, and she was barefoot. Hot in there, all right.

She said, “No me hagas es perar. No me gusta estar sola.”

McConnell looked scandalized. “Quidado con lo que dices o te regreso a Sonora.”

She stuck out her tongue and pouted back into the trailer. The guys on the truck nudged each other.

McConnell shrugged apologetically. “She's young.”

He led me to a redwood table set in the shade between the eucalyptus trees, and had some of the Modelo. A USMC globe and anchor was so faded on his right forearm that it looked like an ink smudge. “Got two thousand square yards of St. Augustine goin' out this evening to a Chinaman in San Marino. If you're looking for St. Augustine I might not be able to help you, but I got twelve other kinds of sod. What are you thinking about?”

I gave him one of my cards. “I'm afraid I wasn't being straight with you, Mr. McConnell. I apologize about that, but I need to ask you about an IA investigation that happened on your watch. I'm hoping you'll talk to me about it.”

He read over the card, then put it on the table. He reached around behind him like he was going for a handkerchief, but came out with a little black .380 automatic. He didn't aim it at me, he just held it.

The men on the truck stopped eating.

“Lying's a poor way to start, son. You carrying?”

I tried not to look at the gun. “Yes, sir. Under my left arm.”

“Take it out with your left hand. Two fingers only. I see more than two fingers on metal, I'll pop you.”

I did what he said. Two fingers.

“You keep holding it like that, away from your body like it smells bad. Walk on back over there and drop it in your car, then come on back.”

The hired hands were poised on the bed like swimmers on their starting platforms, ready to dive if the shooting started. Imagine: Coming north all the way from Zacatecas to get shot in a sod field.

I dropped the gun into the front seat, then walked back to the table.

“I didn't come here to make trouble for you, Mr. McConnell. I just need a few answers. It's been my experience that if I warn people I'm coming, they have a tendency to be gone when I get there. I couldn't afford that you'd be gone.”

McConnell nodded.

“You always carry that little gun out here?”

“I spent thirty years on the job, twenty-five in Internal Affairs. I prosecuted cops who were every bit as rotten as any thug on the street, and I made enemies doing it. More than one of 'm has tried looking me up.”

I guess I'd carry the gun, too.

“I'm trying to learn about a deceased officer named Abel Wozniak. He was investigated when you were on the job as a supervisor, but I don't know why, or what came of it. You remember him?”

He gestured with the .380. “Why don't you tell me what your interest is in this first.”

Retired Detective-Three Mike McConnell listened without expression as I told him about Dersh and Pike. If he knew anything of the headline news happening just a few miles to the west, he gave no indication. That's the way cops are. The first time I mentioned Joe's name, McConnell's eyes flickered, but he didn't react again until I told him that the investigating detective for Internal Affairs had been Harvey Krantz.

McConnell's weathered face split into a mean grin.

“Shits-his-pants Krantz! Hell, I was there the day that squiggly weasel let go!” He enjoyed the memory so much that the .380 drifted away from me. The guys in the truck relaxed then, and pretty soon they were balling up paper bags and climbing into the truck's cab. The show was over and it was time to get back to work.

McConnell said, “So Pike's your partner now, is he?”

“That's right.”

“Pike's the one made Krantz shit his pants.”

“Yes, sir. I know.”

McConnell laughed. “That boy damn near made me shit mine, too, the way he grabbed Krantz. Damn, that boy was fast. Lifted Pants right off the floor. I remember he was a Marine. So was I.”

I thought about that, and how humiliated Krantz must've felt. It had hurt his career, and he still carried the name.

“You remember why Krantz was investigating Wozniak?”

“Oh, sure. Wozniak was involved with a burglary ring.”

He said it like it was nothing, but when I heard it I stiffened as if he'd reached out and flipped my off switch.

McConnell nodded. “Yeah, that's right. Krantz developed it off a couple of Mexican fences working out of Pacoima, up in the valley. Little bitty guys named Reena and Uribe. We called them the Chihuahua Brothers, they were so short. Near as we could figure, Wozniak tipped these Mexicans whenever a business's alarm was on the fritz, or when he found out the watchman had called in sick, or whatever, and they'd send a crew over to rob the place. Auto parts, stereos, that kind of thing.”

“You're saying that Wozniak was dirty.”

“That's right.”

“You're telling me that Joe Pike's partner was part of a burglary ring.”

Like maybe I'd heard him wrong and wanted to be sure.

“Well, we weren't at a point in the investigation where we could make the case and charge him, but he was good for it. After he died we could've kept going, but I decided to let it drop. Here was this man's family, a wife and the children, why put them through that? Krantz was livid about it, though. He wanted to keep going and nail Pike.”

“Because Pike had embarrassed him?”

McConnell was about to take another sip of the beer when he paused, and considered me.

“Not that at all. Harvey believed that Pike was involved.”

Sometimes you hear things that you never want to hear, things so alien to your experience, so outlandish that it seems you've rolled out of bed into a Stephen King novel.

“I don't believe that.”

McConnell shrugged. “Well, most people thought what you thought, that Krantz was just hot to get Pike because Pike's the one made him shit his pants. But Krantz told me he really did believe Pike was involved. He didn't have any proof, but his feeling was how could they not be, the two of them riding together every day. I told'm if he'd spent more time in the car being a real cop instead of trying to suck ass his way into fancier jobs, he'd know. It's like being married. You can spend your whole life with someone and never know them.” He glanced out toward the field. The truck had stopped by the control station of the rainbirds. The two older guys were working there, but the younger guy was out on the sod, jumping and waving his arms and splashing around in the water.

McConnell slid off the table. “Now what do you suppose that fool is doing?”

McConnell shouted something in Spanish, but the men couldn't hear him. The girl reappeared in the door to see why he had shouted. She looked as mystified as McConnell.