Robert Crais: Free Fall

I said, “Ray.”

Up and down the block, doors opened and people came out onto porches and into yards. Pike and Cool T had the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys on the ground and out of the play.

Ray Depente went to Akeem and dragged him to his feet. Ray was a couple of inches taller, but thinner, so they probably weighed close to the same. When Ray was lifting him, Akeem tried to grab and bite, but Ray dug his thumbs into Akeem D’Muere’s eyes. D’Muere screamed and stumbled back. Ray stood and looked at him and there was something hard and remote in his eyes. Ray opened his hands. “Hit me. Let’s see what you got.”

Akeem D’Muere launched a long right hand that caught Ray high on the cheek and made him step back, but when he tried to follow with a left, Ray blocked it to the inside and drove a round kick into the side of D’Muere’s head. D’Muere stumbled sideways, and Ray reversed and kicked him from the opposite side, and this time D’Muere fell. I put a hand on Ray’s shoulder. “That’s enough, Ray.”

Ray slapped away my hand. “Stand away from me now.”

“Ray, you’re going to kill him.” Akeem D’Muere struggled up to his knees.

Ray said, “And wouldn’t that be a shame.” He kicked Akeem D’Muere in the chest and knocked him backwards.

I looked at Pike, but Pike was impassive behind the dark glasses.

Ray walked around behind D’Muere, lifted him by the hair, and said, “You meet James Edward, you tell’m I said hi.” He spun again, and kicked, and Akeem D’Muere snapped over into the ground.

I took out the Dan Wesson. “Ray.”

“You wanna shoot me for a piece of garbage like this, go ahead.”

He picked D’Muere up again. D’Muere’s mouth and nose and ears were bleeding, and most of his teeth were gone. Ray held him up until D’Muere could stand on his own, then Ray punched him four fast times, twice in the solar plexus and twice in the face. Akeem D’Muere fell like a bag of wet laundry. One of the Gangster Girls screamed, “You’re gonna kill’m.”

Ray said, “You think?”

I aimed the Dan Wesson. “I don’t have to kill you, Ray. I can do your knee. Be hard to teach after that.”

Ray nodded. “You’re right. But think of my memories.” He lifted D’Muere’s head by the hair, aimed, and punched him two hard times behind the ear. Then he let the head drop.

“Damn it, Ray.” I cocked the Dan Wesson.

Pike said, “He means it, Ray.”

“I know. So do I.”

He reached down and lifted Akeem D’Muere once more.

As he brought D’Muere up, a dark blue Buick stopped in the street by the LeBaron and Ida Leigh Washington got out. She stood in the street, motionless for a time, and then she moved toward us. She was still wearing the clothes that she had worn to her son’s funeral. Black.

Ray Depente saw her and let Akeem D’Muere fall to the ground. He said, “You shouldn’t be here, Ida Leigh.”

She stopped about ten feet from him and looked at the smoldering house, and then at the thugs on the ground with their hands bound, and then at me and Joe. She said, “I wanted to see where he lived. Is that the one killed my son?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Somewhere far off, a siren sounded. On the way here, no doubt.

Ida Leigh Washington stepped closer and looked down at D’Muere. His face was a mask of blood, but she did not flinch when she saw it. She put a hand on Ray’s forearm and said, “What could turn a boy into an animal like this?”

Ray said, “I don’t know, Ida Leigh.”

She raised her eyes from D’Muere up to Ray. “This man took my last son. No one could claim my hurt, or my anger. No one could have a greater claim on this one’s life.” Her voice was tight and fierce. She patted Ray’s arm. “There’s been enough killing down here. We have to find a way to live without the killing.”

Ray Depente didn’t move for a minute. Ida Leigh Washington kept her eyes on him. Ray stepped back. He turned away from Akeem D’Muere, and as the police cars began to arrive he helped Mrs. Ida Leigh Washington back to her car.

Up and down the street, the people on the porches and in the windows and in the yards began to applaud. It would’ve been nice to think that they were applauding Ida Leigh Washington, but they weren’t. At least I don’t think they were. That far away, those people couldn’t have heard one woman’s softly spoken words , could they?

The cops got out of their cars and looked around and didn’t know what to make of it A Hispanic cop with a butch cut looked at Pike and me and said, “Weren’t you guys at the Seventy-seventh last night?”

“Yeah. We’ll probably be there again tonight, too.”

He didn’t know what to make of that, either.

When the police went into Akeem D’Muere’s house, they found $82,000 in crack cocaine in the attic, along with six cases of stolen rifles. Because the police legally entered the house investigating a crime in progress, the evidence found was admissible and resulted in charges brought against D’Muere. The investigators found no copies of the videotape that Eric Dees destroyed, and Akeem D’Muere, for some reason known only to him, denied all knowledge of such a tape.

The DA went easy on Pike and me. They agreed to trade on all charges except the assault on the police guards when Pike and I escaped from the Seventy-seventh. We were allowed to plead to a misdemeanor, served three days in county jail, and then it was over.

Of the five REACT officers involved in the wrongful death of Charles Lewis Washington, only Warren Pinkworth and Mark Thurman survived. Thurman turned state’s evidence and sought neither a plea nor mercy. Warren Pinkworth was indicted on five counts of murder. He attempted a plea, but none was allowed.

Sixteen weeks after the events at the Space Age Drive-In Theater in Lancaster, Mark Thurman was fired from the ranks of the LAPD, losing all benefits that had been accrued. He said he didn’t mind. He said it could have been worse. He was right. Four days after that all administrative and criminal charges were dropped against Mark Thurman due to the intercession of Mrs. Ida Leigh Washington. Three members of the city council and one member of the DA’s staff objected and wanted, for political reasons, to use Thurman as an example, but cooler heads were only too happy to acquiesce to Mrs. Washington’s wishes. Negotiations were under way in the matter of her wrongful-death suits against the city. She was suing in the names of both of her sons.

Twenty-four weeks and three days after the events in the Space Age Drive-In, after spring had moved into summer, and then into the early part of fall, I was sitting in my office reading last week’s newspaper when the phone rang and I answered, “Elvis Cole Detective Agency, we’re on your case for no money down.”

Jennifer Sheridan laughed. It was a good laugh, nice and dear. She and Mark were living together in Lancaster. She had given up her job with Watkins, Okum, amp; Beale and had taken a new job with a law firm based in Mojave. She had taken a twenty-percent cut in salary to do it, but she said that it was what she wanted. Mark Thurman had applied for a job with both the Palmdale PD and the Lancaster PD, but had been rejected both times. He had decided to return to school and obtain a degree in physical education. He thought he might like to coach high-school football. Jennifer Sheridan was sure that he would be wonderful at it She said, “How do you expect prospective clients to take you seriously if you answer the phone that way?”

I gave her Groucho. “You kiddin’? I wouldn’t work for a client who’d hire me.”

She laughed again. “You do a terrible Groucho.”