Robert Crais - Free Fall

“The report also said Lewis owned the pawnshop.”

“That’s right.”

“Where’d he get the money to buy an ongoing business like that, Mrs. Washington?”

There were lovely crocheted doilies on the couch’s arms. She straightened the one nearest her, then began to twist it. “He had money from the Navy. And I co-signed some papers.”

Marcus climbed down off the couch and toddled out of the living room and into the kitchen. Mrs. Washington leaned forward to see where he was going but Shalene didn’t. Mrs. Washington straightened and looked at her. “You’d better see where he’s going.”

Shalene went into the kitchen after him.

I said, “Mrs. Washington, I don’t want to offend you, and I promise you that nothing you say to me will be repeated to police or to anyone else. Was Lewis fencing stolen goods?”

Her eyes filled. “Yes,” she said. “I believe that he was. But that gave them no call. Lewis didn’t carry no gun. Lewis wouldn’t have done what they said.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I know my boy. I know him the way only a mother can know a son. They had no call to hurt my boy.” Jennifer Sheridan knowing Mark Thurman.

“Yes, ma’am.” She was twisting the crocheted doily into a high, tight peak.

I said, “If you believe that, then why did you drop the wrongful-death suit against the officers who killed him?”

Mrs. Washington closed her eyes against the tears, and the old man spoke for the first time. He said, “Because Lewis was always looking for trouble and he finally found it. There’s nothing else to it, no reason to keep it alive.” His voice was deep and gravelly, and more like a bark than a voice. His eyes blinked rapidly as he said it. “It was right to let it go, just let it go and walk away. Let the dead lie. There’s nothing more to say to it.” He put the Scrapple can carefully on the floor, then, just as carefully, he pushed himself up and walked from the room. He took very short steps, and used first the couch and then the wall to steady himself. Shalene had come back with Marcus in her arms to stand in the door to the kitchen, staring at me and hating me. Mrs. Washington was staring into the folds of her lap, eyes clenched, her body quivering as if it were a leaf in the wind. I sat there in the warm living room and looked at them and listened and I did not believe them. Mrs. Washington said, “You should go. I’m sorry, now, but you should go.”

“You really, truly believe he was murdered.”

“You have to go.”

I said, “Did the officers threaten you?”

“Please, go.”

“The officers who shot Lewis. Did they come here and threaten you and make you drop the suit?”

“Please leave.”

James Edward said, “What’re you going to tell him, Mama?”

“Don’t you say anything, James Edward. There’s nothing more to say.” Ida Leigh Washington pushed to her feet and waved me toward the door. “I want you out of my house. You’re not the police and you have no paper that says you can be here and I want you out.”

Marcus began to wail. For a moment, everything was still, and then I stood. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Washington. I’m sorry about your son.”

James Edward went to the door and followed me out. Mrs. Washington hurried after us, but stopped in the door. “Don’t you go out there with him, James Edward. They’ll see you, out there.”

James Edward said, “It’s all right, Mama.”

He pushed her gently back into the house and closed the door. It was cooler on the porch, and the rose smell was fresh and strong. We stood like that for a moment, then James Edward went to the edge of the porch and peered out between the roses and looked at his neighborhood. He said, “I wasn’t here when it happened.”

“The Navy?”

He nodded. “Missed the riots, too. I was away for four years, first in the Med, then the Indian.”

“How long have you been out?”

“Five weeks, four days, and I gotta come back to this.” He looked at me. “You think it’s the cops, huh?”

I nodded.

He gave disgusted, and moved into the shade behind the trellis. “The cops killed my brother, but a nigger named Akeem D’Muere made’m drop the suit.”

I gave him stupid. “Who’s Akeem D’Muere?”

“Runs a gang called the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys.”

“A black gang made your family drop the suit?” I was taking stupid into unexplored realms.

“You’re the detective. I been away for four years.” He turned from the street and sat on the glider and I sat next to him.

“So why’s a black gang force a black family to drop a wrongful-death suit against a bunch of white cops?”

He shook his head. “Can’t say. But I’m gonna find out.”

“There has to be some kind of connection.”

“Man, you must be Sherlock fuckin’ Holmes.”

“Hey, you get me up to speed, I’m something to watch.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look like he believed it.

I said, “This is your ’hood, James Edward, not mine. If there’s a connection between these guys, there’s going to be a way to find out, but I don’t know what it is.”

“So what?”

“So they don’t have a detective’s-mate rating in the Navy, and maybe I can help you find out. I find out, and maybe we can get your mother out from under this thing.”

James Edward Washington gave me a long, slow look, like maybe he was wondering about something, and then he got up and started off the porch without waiting for me. “C’mon. I know a man we can see.”

We walked out to the Corvette and James Edward Washington gave approval. I got in, but James Edward took a slow walk around. “Sixty-five?”

“Sixty-six.”

“I thought private eyes were supposed to drive clunky little cars like Columbo.”

“That’s TV.”

“What about if you follow somebody? Don’t a car like this stand out?” James Edward was liking my car just fine.

“If I was living in Lost Overshoe, Nebraska, it stands out. In L.A., it’s just another convertible. A lot of places I work, if I drove a clunker it’d stand out more than this.”

James Edward smiled. “Yeah, but this ain’t those places. This is South Central.”

“We’ll see.”

James Edward climbed in, told me to head east toward Western, and I pulled a K-turn and did it.

We drove north on Western to Slauson, then turned east to parallel the railroad tracks, then turned north again. James Edward told me that we were going to see a guy he knew named Ray Depente. He said that Ray had spent twenty-two years in the Marine Corps, teaching hand-to-hand down at Camp Pendleton before tendering his retirement and opening a gym here in Los Angeles to work with kids and sponsor gang intervention programs. He also said that if anyone knew the South Central gang scene, Ray did. I said that sounded good to me.

Four blocks above Broadway I spotted the same two guys in the same blue sedan that I’d suspected of following me two days ago. They stayed with us through two turns, and never came closer than three cars nor dropped back farther than six. When we came to a 7-Eleven, I pulled into the lot and told James Edward that I had to make a call. I used the pay phone there to dial a gun shop in Culver City, and a man’s voice answered on the second ring. “Pike.”

“It’s me. I’m standing in a 7-Eleven parking lot on San Pedro about three blocks south of Martin Luther King Boulevard. I’m with a black guy in his early twenties named James Edward Washington. A white guy and a Hispanic guy in a dark blue 1989 sedan are following us. I think they’ve been following me for the past two days.”

“Shoot them.” Life is simple for some of us.