Stephen Cannell - Vigilante

“So what are you saying?”

“I don’t know what I’m saying. It’s just interesting that when we pull up at Lita’s crime scene he’s already down the street interviewing witnesses.”

We sat in silence, thinking about it while ghetto cars and morning delivery trucks rattled past.

“No matter what, you gotta know I’ve got your back, Shane. I’ll never point a finger at you. I’ll go down swinging first.”

“Back atcha.”

We bumped fists, then I picked up my cell and dialed my wife, Alexa, who’s an LAPD captain and runs the Detective Bureau, supervising three hundred detectives from the Police Administration Building downtown. She needed to know about this.

Alexa is amazing. Besides being my wife, who I’m deeply in love with, she’s also the smartest cop I know. She is beautiful, with shiny black hair, high cheekbones, reef-water blue eyes, and a gorgeous figure. How she decided to be a cop instead of a model and how I ended up with her are two of life’s consummate mysteries. She answered on the first ring.

“I’m in the chief’s weekly COMSTAT conference,” she whispered into the receiver. “Make it quick, Shane.”

“Lita Mendez is dead. Murdered,” I said.

There was a long pause on her end of the line.

“You hear what I just said?”

“Yeah. I’m just walking out of the meeting. Hang on a second.” After a few moments she said, “Okay, I’m in the hall. How’d she die?”

“Beaten in her home in Boyle Heights, then double-tapped. According to maggot infestation, lividity, rigor mortis, and a few other things, I’m guessing it happened in the middle of last night, but the coroner will be giving us a better time-of-death estimate in a few hours.”

“Look out. This is going to be a media red ball with serious anti-police overtones,” she warned.

“You haven’t even heard the worst of it.”

“Go on.”

“Nix Nash was on our crime scene when we got there. He’s already turned up a neighbor who says he saw a screaming fight between Lita and someone named Carla Sanchez over a ceiling fan. I’m not sure I trust it. Hitch and I don’t know what’s going on yet.”

“What’s going on is, you’re about to get your own reality show,” she whispered darkly. She was silent for a second before she added, “I wonder if Nash and Lita knew each other.”

That’s what I meant about her being the smartest cop I knew. It took her ten seconds to make that connection.

“Listen, Alexa. Will you have somebody get me everything you can on Nixon Nash-his whole backstory? Most of what Hitch and I know is just off the stupid main title on his show, and that’s probably BS. I want the real facts on this guy. If we’re going head-to-head with a monster, we better know what cave he’s been sleeping in.”

After she hung up, Hitch and I headed on to Carla Sanchez’s house. We were on either a cop’s mission or a fool’s errand.

Guess which.

Carla Sanchez lived in a large white stucco apartment building in Boyle Heights. The structure was known on the street and at the Hollenbeck Police Station as the White House. Not because of its color but because the White Fence Inca leader lived in an apartment on the top floor and his entire cabinet of veteranos resided in apartments on the lower levels.

It was 11:00 A.M. when we pulled up in front. I hadn’t recognized the address when I wrote it down, but once we arrived I realized that I’d been here before, back when I was on loan to an anti-narcotics task force for a few weeks during a citywide drug sweep.

The building was what was known as a gang module. Far from being palatial, it was an ordinary six-story stucco building. What it lacked in ornamentation it more than made up for in security. The White Fence Inca had mandated that shooters be on the roof 24-7 to protect the families of his shot callers, who lived under the constant threat of payback from rival sets.

After we pulled to the curb but before I could turn off the engine, people up and down the street were already standing up and walking away from porch gliders and sagging wicker chairs, heading to the safety of their homes. My car was a standard Acura, but thirty seconds after we parked we’d been made.

“We gotta start wearing better cologne,” Hitch quipped.

“Okay, so this address confirms that Carla and Julio are connected to people in the top tier of White Fence.”

“How do you wanta play it?” Hitch asked.

“We got two possible courses of action. One: we can back off, get a warrant, and come back with SWAT, or two: we can say the Disney prayer and go in wearing our Mickey Mouse ears.”

“Never hurts to be safe,” Hitch said, opting for the backup.

“Except if we come back with SWAT, we add a big testosterone factor. It’s all about ganas with these G’sters. Besides, neither of us trust Chavaria. Since this is probably bullshit, I think we’ll find out more if we low-key it.”

“How you gonna low-key a police sit-down inside a gang module?” Hitch correctly wondered.

“Your call then.”

“Meet ya halfway. Let’s have at least one unit stand by,” he suggested. “They can park up the street with their safeties off.”

“Make the call.”

He reached under the dash, pulled out the mike, and triggered it. “This is Delta-Fifteen requesting area backup to 1414 Lorena Street in Boyle Heights,” he said. “Have the responding unit meet us on Tac Two.”

“Roger that,” the RTO said. “One-Adam-Fifty-Six, D-Fifteen requests backup at 1414 Lorena. Meet the detectives on Tac Two.”

We heard Adam-56 affirm the call, and Hitch switched the radio to Tac Two, which was a tactical frequency for undercover ops and allows for longer, less formal communication.

“This is A-Fifty-Six. I’m George; my partner’s Gately,” a woman’s voice said. “How can we help you guys?”

“We’re two plainclothes detectives headed inside the apartment house located at 1414 Lorena Street on a one-eighty-seven investigation,” Hitch said. “You know the building.”

“Yeah, the White House. Gang shit hole,” the lady cop’s voice replied.

“We might have something and then again maybe not,” Hitch continued. “If we need to make an arrest, we’re gonna want you guys to show the flag. We’ll keep our rover on. If we need help we’ll give you two squawks.”

“Roger that,” the woman’s voice came back. “Our ETA your location is three minutes. What’s the apartment number?”

“Six-Fifty-Seven,” Hitch said. “We’re drawing a lot of interest out front, so we’re going in now.”

The cops in A-56 squelched twice in acknowledgment.

Hitch clipped a Rover hand unit to his belt; then we got out of the car and headed into the building. There were two teenaged gangbangers on lookout duty lounging on the front steps. I could tell from their alert, feral postures that they, like everyone else, had made us the minute we pulled up. Because they knew we were cops they didn’t want to start anything, but that didn’t stop them from insolently mad-dogging us.

“How ya doin’, guys?” Hitch said pleasantly as he walked past. Neither of them replied.

The ground floor was empty. I noticed movement on the front steps behind us and saw the two lookouts walking away. Both had cell phones to their ears, spreading the word.

The elevator arrived and we got in and rode silently up to the sixth floor. So far, so good. We exited and walked down a corridor still rich with the smells of morning cooking. At Apartment 657 we stopped.

I knocked and a minute later saw the dim pinhole of light disappear from the peephole as someone on the other side of the door put their eye to the lens. I held up my badge.