NINE FIFTEEN IN the morning, five hours after the shower and another long nap, I’d totally recovered. Almost, anyway.
I sat in the truck just down from 450 Bauchet Street, MCJ’s exit for the Inmate Reception Center. I didn’t know how long this burst of new energy would last before my ass would again start to drag and threaten total collapse. I had to work fast and get things done. Make things happen. Get back to Costa Rica and the kids. Back to Dad.
And now, as if I didn’t have enough to think about, the added emotional load of Bea Elliot floated around in my brain like a lost, wandering child bleating for its mama. The way she looked, the things she said, the way she acted. I tried to shake all of that off and focus on the task at hand. And found it near impossible.
On the seat next to me, Drago had put two different types of binoculars in the war bag: one huge marine pair and the second pocket size. I held up the marine binocs for twenty to thirty seconds at a time, trying to conserve my strength. I hoped I hadn’t missed Whitey coming out. I kept the air conditioner running in the new, glossy black GMC truck. It had dark tinted windows to keep anyone from seeing inside and a hard fiberglass tonneau cover over the bed.
I’d left Drago back at the hotel suite sitting on the couch watching Ren and Stimpy on Nickelodeon, the big-screen sound turned down low, as he stuffed his mouth with my reserve stash of Snowballs and Yoo-hoo chocolate drinks. I couldn’t leave Marie there alone unprotected. Not with Bea Elliot in the next room. I didn’t know anything about her. Not enough anyway. At the very least, with Bea’s background, someone of ill repute could populate her orbit and put Marie at risk. That wasn’t going to happen.
My own mother. What a shocker. And then to think of her that way. As a risk.
Based on what I did know, I couldn’t trust her. This wasn’t a fair assumption; I was prejudging. When it came to Marie, I wouldn’t take any chances.
Marie had been up all night worried about me. I’d left her asleep in bed with a handful of kidnap crime scene photos resting on her chest. She just wanted to help and get this over with as soon as possible. She’d also read more of the report than I did.
Once she woke and found Drago with his pile of torn-up Snowball packaging and empty Yoo-hoo bottles—his feet up on the coffee table—she was going to be mad as hell. Better angry than the alternative, me worrying about her all day. Drago was like a bulldog; he wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She liked Drago a lot and didn’t mind him hanging around. She’d just be angry at me for not having anyone to back my play out on the street. Especially in my current condition.
At MCJ people came and went in cars, patrol units, and long buses painted black and white with “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department” on the sides. Every size, shape, and color of sketchy human popped out of the freedom gate. All looked relieved. Some wandered out with their heads craned in wonderment to the bright blue sky. A few immediately took off running to get as far away as possible. One guy in a wrinkled business suit went to his knees and kissed the filthy ground. I knew how he felt. I’d been there.
Five minutes later, out came Whitey. His first step a stumbling trip, almost as if the IRC regurgitated a piece of rancid meat and spit him out. He held all his worldly possessions in a clear plastic bag clutched to his chest as he looked around waiting to be picked up. He wore dirty denim pants and a yellow tee shirt with black letters on the back that read Will trade wife for beer. A real charmer, this guy.
He waited exactly eleven minutes and twenty-eight seconds before he rabbited. He hurried down the street, his head on a swivel as he made his break.
He went to the bus stop at the corner, his anxiety high from his perilous choice to leave before I could pick him up.
His angst translated down to his feet; he paced back and forth waiting for the bus. I wouldn’t swoop him. Not yet. I wanted to see where he went. See if anyone else was interested in him. Like the Crips.
The city bus pulled up and disgorged more citizens of similar ilk who beelined to MCJ Visiting to see a loved one behind the thick Plexiglas, to talk to them using a black, hard plastic phone placed to their ear. The same piece of black plastic used by tens of thousands of other folks that came before them.
The majority were women trundling children along by outstretched arms; this added load more a drag on their lives than a darling child.
Whitey stepped up onto the bus. His head came out for one last look around. He smiled with his disgustingly white dentures, pleased with himself at the move he’d made. In his pea brain, he’d pulled one over on Bruno Johnson. The door to the bus wheezed closed. The huge beast belched out a cloud of black smoke as it lumbered off down the road retracing the same path in the asphalt, doing it hour after hour, day after day.
Even with only one car in the surveillance, following something dinosaur-sized was easy. Each time the bus pulled to a stop I double-parked down the street, engine running. The other drivers, familiar with discourteous commuters, waited impatiently behind me rather than risk a road rage incident with the unseen occupant of the truck.
Inside the bus, the carefree Whitey sat and talked with a woman, flashing his pearly whites. A regular Don Ameche.
The bus headed south, out of downtown. Thirty minutes later, Whitey disembarked at 60th and Avalon. He had his arm around that same poorly dressed woman who’d been out in the sun all her life, eighty years old, or maybe forty, her dirty brown hair a static halo. They went into a market of sorts, one lacking any signage and covered in gang graffiti. They came out two minutes later, each carrying a forty-ounce bottle of Old English 800 beer. Whitey didn’t belong in this area. The Rollin’ Sixties Crips owned it. What was going on?
I’d had enough and pulled up to the curb outside the market. Whitey lost his disingenuous smile when he saw me get out. He quickly looked both ways, ready to flee. No way did I have the gumption to pursue. I wouldn’t make it fifty steps before I collapsed. I stopped and yelled, “I’m not in the mood. You rabbit, I’ll get in the truck and run you down like a dog, then just keep on driving.”
He raised his chin. “No, you won’t. You wouldn’t dare. You need me.”
I walked toward him. “Yeah, like I need herpes.”
The woman standing shoulder to shoulder with him said, “Baby, what’s going on? Who’s this smoke talkin’ shit? What’s he doing here?”
“This, my lovely princess, is the late, great Bruno Johnson.”
The forty-ounce bottle slipped from her grasp and shattered. Liquid yellow with white foam covered the grubby sidewalk and spiked it with shards of glass. She backed up until she reached the wall of the market, her eyes wary and filled with fear. She turned and scurried down the street.
“Thanks a lot. You just ruined a real good thing. She promised me a blow—”
I knocked the bottle out of his hand. It shattered, and added to the humid reek of cheap hops that rose off the already heated concrete.
Two cars skidded up and stopped, angled to the curb in front of the market, one a Chevy Malibu, the other a Toyota Camry. Two men jumped out of the Malibu, guns drawn. Out of the Toyota came a third cop. Along with Hellen Hellinger. Two of the men yelled to put up our hands.
How had they found me? I’d been careful about a tail. No way had they followed me.
Whitey complied and whispered, “Now who’s in deep shit, Mr. Bruno Johnson?”