Carter Chris - The Death Sculptor

Tito’s housing project was a redbrick, square-box monstrosity just west of Bell Gardens Park. The building’s metal entrance doors clanged like prison gates behind Hunter and Garcia as they stepped into the dingy ground-floor hall. The small space smelled heavily of urine and stale sweat, and there wasn’t an inch of wall that wasn’t graffitied. There were no elevators, just a set of dirty, narrow stairs going up five floors. Tito’s apartment was number 311.

Graffiti followed Hunter and Garcia all the way up, as if the stairwell was a colorful psychedelic tunnel. As they reached the third floor, they were greeted by an even more sickening smell than the one at the entrance hall – something like sour milk, or old, dried-up vomit.

‘Damn,’ Garcia said, bringing a hand up to cover his nose. ‘This whole place stinks like a sewer.’

In front of them, a long and narrow corridor in semi-darkness. Halfway down it one of the few working tube florescent lights that ran along the ceiling was malfunctioning, disco dancing on and off.

‘All we need is some music,’ Garcia joked. ‘And a whole cleaning squad with disinfectants and air fresheners.’

The door to apartment 311 was directly under the flickering light. They could hear Spanish dance music coming from inside. Hunter knocked three times. Instinctively, both detectives positioned themselves to the left and right of the door. There was no reply. Hunter waited about fifteen seconds and knocked again, placing his right ear closer to the door. He could hear movement inside.

A couple of seconds later the door was opened by a five-foot-three Latin woman with dark hair and in her early-twenties. She was beyond skinny. Her olive-tanned skin clung to her bones as if they were the only things left to cling to. Her pupils were dilated to the size of coffee beans, and her stare was distant and dopey. She was naked except for an ill-fitting Chinese-style robe draped over her scrawny shoulders. She didn’t bother closing it.

‘Oh, sexy visitors,’ she said with a Spanish accent, before Hunter and Garcia could introduce themselves. ‘We like visitors. The more the merrier.’ She gave them a cigarette-stained smile and pulled the door fully open. ‘Come in and let’s partyyy.’ She blew Hunter a kiss and started swinging to the sound of the music.

‘What the fuck are you doing, bitch?’ Tito stepped out from the bedroom, wearing nothing but a pair of lacy purple panties. ‘Get back in here and . . .’ He choked mid-sentence when his eyes rested on the two new arrivals. ‘What the fuck?’ He tried covering himself up. Hunter and Garcia were already inside the apartment, both staring at Tito – a six-foot-one, two-hundred-and-ten-pound man with a pear-shaped body, wearing a pair of women’s panties.

‘That’s not right,’ Hunter whispered.

Garcia’s headshake was barely noticeable. ‘So, so wrong.’

‘We’ve got some more people for our party, Papi,’ the woman said, closing the door. ‘Let’s get naked and daaance.’ She let her robe drop to the floor and reached for the buttons on Hunter’s shirt. He gently moved her hands away.

‘No, unfortunately we’re not here for the party.’ He collected her robe from the floor and helped her back into it.

‘ Ai, chingado . Stupid bitch, get back in the room,’ Tito said, walking over and pulling the woman by her arm before wrapping himself in a white bath towel.

‘Thank you for covering yourself, Tito,’ Garcia said. ‘I was starting to feel queasy.’

‘Tito, waz going on up in there?’ a new female voice called from the bedroom. This one sounded very young.

‘Nothing, girl. Shut the fuck up.’

Garcia kept a smile locked. ‘How many people have you got in there, Tito?’

‘None of your goddamn business, cop.’

The Latin woman seemed to sober up instantly. ‘They’re cops?’

‘What do you think, you dumb ho? They sure as hell ain’t pizza-delivery boys. Now get back in there and stay there.’ Tito pushed her into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. ‘What do you guys want? And why are you inside my apartment without a warrant?’

‘We don’t need a warrant,’ Garcia replied, looking around the room. ‘We were cordially invited inside by your . . . girlfriend.’

‘She ain’t my girlfriend . . .’

‘We need to talk, Tito,’ Hunter cut him short. ‘Right now.’

‘Screw that, cop. I don’t need to talk to you. I don’t need to do shit.’ He opened a drawer on the wooden sideboard next to him and quickly reached inside for something.

Fifty-Eight

In a blink of an eye, both detectives sprang into synchronized action, Hunter moving left and Garcia right, widening the distance between them, and drawing their guns at the same time. Both of their aims dead on Tito’s chest. They moved so fast that it made Tito freeze in place.

‘Easy there, lacy panties,’ Garcia called out. ‘Let me see your hands, nice and easy.’

‘Hey, hey,’ Tito jumped back and lifted his hands high up in the air. He was holding a stereo remote-control unit. ‘Holy shit, homes. What the hell is wrong with you all? I just wanted to turn down the music.’ Almost imperceptibly he jerked his chin towards his left shoulder. The same nervous tic that gave him away in the CCTV footage from his armed-robbery adventure seven years ago.

Hunter and Garcia thumbed their safeties back on and holstered their weapons.

‘What the hell is wrong with you ?’ Garcia replied. ‘You should know better than to make sudden moves like that in front of cops. You’re gonna get yourself killed.’

‘I’ve done OK so far.’

‘Tito, sit down,’ Hunter said, pulling a chair from the round wooden table that occupied the center of the small living room. Tito’s lounge/diner was dull and dark, decorated by someone with no taste and probably half-blind. The walls were a dirty shade of beige, or maybe they were white once. The laminated wooden floor was so scratched it looked like Tito wore ice-skates in the apartment. The place reeked of pot and booze.

Tito hesitated, trying to look hard.

‘Tito, sit down,’ Hunter repeated. His tone didn’t change, but his gaze demanded obedience.

Tito finally had a seat and slouched back on the chair like an angry schoolboy. His flabby bare torso was covered in tattoos, as were his arms. His shaved head displayed several scars. Hunter guessed he’d acquired most of them in prison.

‘This is bullshit, man,’ Tito said, nervously fidgeting with a yellow plastic lighter. ‘You guys have no right to be here. I’m as good as gold. You can ask my parole officer. He’ll vouch for me.’

‘Of course you are, Tito,’ Hunter said, staring directly at him and softly tapping the tip of his nose three times. ‘White gold, you mean.’

Tito pinched his nose then looked at his thumb and forefinger. A white powder residue clung to them. He quickly re-pinched his nose four or five times, snorting with each pinch to clear away what was left. ‘Oh man, that’s horseshit. We were just having a little fun in the room, you know what it is? Nothing heavy, man. Just something to liven us up. It’s my day off. We were just letting off some steam, you feel me?’

‘Relax, Tito. We’re not here to bust your balls, or spoil your little party,’ Garcia said, tilting his head in the bedroom’s direction. ‘So just secure that hard-on for five minutes. We really just want to talk.’

‘You must be tripping, homes. If I had a hard-on I’d tip this table over.’ He nodded, smiling. ‘That’s right, homes, I’ve got more game than a pheasant hunt.’

‘OK, whatever, King Ding-a-Ling,’ Hunter said, standing directly across the table from him. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions and then we’re out of here.’