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  Chapter 17

  Secada and I were seated at one of the upholstered train booths inside the Pacific Dining Car restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. It was almost nine a. M. I was having Swiss eggs, Engineer Style. Secada was slaughtering a Trainman's Breakfast, pushing the avocado, onions, and eggs into a pile in the center of her plate, knife and fork at the ready.

  "You're telling me that every one of these people are P. C. S for that little bus company police department?" she asked, glancing sideways at the list of names the Fiscal Crimes Division had given me. "What the hell is that all about?" She wrinkled her nose and stabbed an egg yolk for emphasis. Yellow oozed.

  "Maybe, like us, they just like the feel of a badge in their pockets."

  "Come on, Shane. These guys are running some kinda scam."

  The information seemed to have cost Secada her appetite and she began poking at the mashed-up contents on the platter in front of her, rearranging it with her fork, peering into the mess as if she was searching for bugs.

  Our waiter came up and smiled at her hesitantly.

  "Everything all right? Is your meal acceptable?"

  He was looking at Secada with concern, holding her eyes for a bit longer than necessary. The Pacific Dining Car is one of L. A.'s gastronomic landmarks, and is housed in an authentic Union Pacific rail car on Sixth Street. Because it's open twenty-four hours, it's a haunt for night owls who often collided with the incoming five a. M. brokerage crowd. The restaurant's also a favorite spot for cops, being just a short drive from Parker Center.

  "It's fine," she told the waiter. "Just doing some food art." Then she lanced the poor guy with one of her high-voltage smiles. I heard him exhale before he moaned softly and turned away.

  After the waiter left, I said, "A better question is what's the key that connects this little Valley bus line to them?"

  "Are we getting sidetracked here?" she said. "Does any of this get us any closer to a writ of habeas corpus for Tru Hickman?"

  "I think so… I don't know why yet, but there's gotta be a reason Brian Devine and Tito Morales buried that kid on bad evidence. What I want to know is why a cop and a Deputy D. A. were protecting a gangster like Mike Church? We need to come up with that answer, and we need it before our transmittal letters and charge sheets come through from I. A."

  "But there's still a big disconnect here," she persisted. "Okay, let's say this miscarriage of justice wasn't just sloppy police work. But does it have anything to do with Wade Wyatt or all of these guys being transit police commissioners?"

  "I think it does."

  "But what if it doesn't? What if that's just a random fact? What if it doesn't connect up to the motive for the killing, which as you recall, was over a six-pack of Bud Light."

  "Okay, we don't have it yet. I admit that. But something is definitely not right and it's bigger than just some bad due-process on Tru Hickman's case."

  "I agree. But which of these inconsistencies should we look at first? In a day, we're both gonna be on suspension."

  "Let's split up. You go over to the Van Nuys high school where Mike Church spent his early years conking classmates for their lunch money. Check his senior class yearbook for these names." I picked up the list I'd made and handed it to her. "Find out if any of these other characters went there. Also, take that list of license plate names we got from Church's house."

  She was skeptical. "You think it goes all the way back to high school?"

  "Maybe. I saw Van Nuys High Wolves stickers on a few of those cars we ran. Something connects these people. Maybe it's as easy as they all went to Van Nuys High."

  "What're you gonna do?"

  "I read in the paper a few weeks ago that Tito Morales had a campaign headquarters in the Valley and was looking for volunteers. I thought I'd go down and join his campaign."

  I saw an envious look cross her beautiful face. "Oh, that's a very cool idea. But I definitely think I should be the one to do that."

  "The old Wonder Bread thing again?"

  "Well, yeah," she nodded. "I mean, I'll blend in better, don't you think?"

  "Blend in? Are you crazy? I hate to break this to you, Scout, but you blend in about like Eva Longoria at a tractor pull. I'm a better choice. I'll get some glasses and a Woody Allen sweater. I'll fall by and sign up. Don't worry, I'll be so boring, nobody will notice me."

  "Shit, good idea." She pouted. "I should've come up with that." Then she looked down at her plate and started forking food into her mouth. "When you get to his campaign headquarters, see if you can get your hands on his contributors list," she said between bites.

  "I can't just walk in there and start rifling his files. This is going to require a little finesse."

  She wrinkled her nose and shot me the super-megawatt. A second later, I heard my breath wheeze out. But I didn't moan. At least not until I was safely back inside my car.

  Chapter 18

  The campaign headquarters was located in a small storefront on Magnolia Avenue in Van Nuys. There was a large, half-block-size Rite-Aid on one of the corners. I pulled into the drugstore's parking lot, then walked inside and bought myself an ugly pair of tortoise-shell horn rims with a magnifying power of one, which didn't blur my vision too badly. There was a section that had inexpensive shoes, sweaters, running pants, and jeans. I selected a tan cardigan, a Sluggo newsboy cap, and, just because I'd spent all day yesterday looking like the Angel of Death, I went for a less threatening look, adding a plastic pocket protector and a few pens and pencils.

  I exited with my bag of goodies, ditched my jacket in the trunk, and put on this magnificent getup. Then I checked myself out in the drugstore's window. As a disguise, it was cresting on ridiculous, but I reminded myself that I was on a limited budget and walked down the street to the Morales for Mayor Campaign headquarters.

  From the outside, it looked to be about two thousand square feet. Inside, through the plate glass, I could see cubicles and low partitions. There were perhaps ten people working phone banks and doing paperwork at scuffed metal desks. The windows were loaded with campaign stick-ons. tito alonzo morales for los angeles mayor was festooned in red, white, and blue letters across the top. Then there were a bunch of slogans: "Morales Means Moral Government." "Don't Be Fooled by Shiny Packages-Morales for Mayor." "For Moral-A-T-Vote T. A. Morales."

  I was convinced. Where do I sign up?

  I walked inside and approached a young, overweight Hispanic girl with a bad complexion and a rat's nest hairdo with about five pencils jammed in at odd angles.

  "Hi," I said, smiling at her, trying to project a harmless duffer quality, which, if you're observant and happen to spot all the scar tissue over my eyes, never quite works.

  "Hi." She was cutting apart printed one-sheets that depicted a handsome picture of Tito Morales. She glanced up at me and went back to what she was doing.

  "I was wondering if you guys could use any help," I said. "I really like what I hear about this guy."

  "Are you kidding? We need all the help we can get." She shot me a huge smile, wide and welcoming. "We need these up all over the Valley. We're trying to post at least a hundred a day, but we now have to go back and replace the ones on Magnolia, past Woodman, because the kids over by San Joaquin Elementary School are tearing them down, or worse still, drawing moustaches."

  "I gotta fix for that," I grinned. "Just have Mr. Morales grow a moustache to match the artwork. Problem solved." It was a dumb joke, but I was trying to come off dumb and nonthreatening. To put the point across, I gave her my Don Knotts smile.

  "At last, a comedian arrives," she said without humor. Then she motioned to a stack of cut posters. "You wanta put these up, it'd be a big help."

  "Sure."

  "So what's your name?" she asked.

  "I'm Shane."

  "Carmelita."

  "Listen, does Mr. Morales ever come around? It'd be totally bitchin' to meet him."

  "Every afternoon during his lunch recess from court. Usually around one o'clock.
When he gets here, I'll introduce you." That meant I had to be well out of sight by the time he showed up at one. "He's a great man," she smiled. "Someone who really cares. He's got morals and convictions."

  One of the things I've learned as a cop is the minute the word "moral" enters a sentence, look out, because morals are never going to be involved.

  I looked around at the others in the room. Most of the volunteers were girls in their mid to late twenties. Tito's heroic profile and Latino charm were probably big pluses in this office.

  "So, Carmelita, how many people on the campaign staff city-wide?"

  " 'Bout two hundred now," she smiled. "With you, two-oh-one. But with the election two months away, we're just really going into high gear. We're opening four bigger offices-downtown, Century City, West L. A., and another one here in the Valley. We start the first big swarm of TV ads in a week."

  "A swarm of TV ads? Wow, good going."

  She motioned at the office. "Next week, we're switching this space over to clerical staff mostly. We set up here originally to be close to the courthouse so Mr. Morales could get over at lunch and help organize things. But the campaign has picked up so much steam we had to get bigger spaces. Once the new offices open, all the administrative and fund-raising stuff will be over at Century City."

  "Cool." I reoffered a geeky smile. "New offices, TV… I was going to suggest I could help you guys solicit funds. I'm in a lot of clubs: Rotary, Kiwanis. But it sounds like you're all set in the money department."

  "We can always use more money. This campaign is gonna be a street fight." She grabbed a sheet of paper from a file and handed it to me. "Fill this out. It'll help us place you where you can do the most good."

  She pointed out an empty cubicle with her chewed-to-the-nub pencil. I sat down at the desk and filled out the form: "Shane O'Herlihy," and the address of the bar downtown. I put down my cell number and lots of nonsense and gobbledygook for job history, including junior high school science teacher. Under reason for wanting to be a part of the Morales campaign I wrote, "Tito Morales is awesome," and underlined it three times. Then I checked "fund-raising" and "helping to register voters" as my two main campaign interests. It took about five minutes. I got up and handed it back to Carmelita.

  "This is great," she said, and put it in a file. Then she pushed the stack of one-sheet posters across the desk to me.

  "Here you go. You can start by putting those up on Magnolia." I bundled the stack under my arm. "Listen, Shane. Not on every lamppost, okay? Spread 'em out. No more than six to a mile." "Right."

  I left the campaign headquarters, walked back to my car, and put the one-sheets in my trunk. I ditched the disguise, put on my jacket, and walked about four blocks down the street to get some coffee at a Denny's. I brought the coffee back, and parked my MDX where I could see the storefront campaign headquarters and the parking lot on the west side. Then I took out a telephoto lens and screwed it onto my Canon digital camera, slouched down in the seat, and went into surveillance mode.

  The first surprise came at a little after twelve-thirty, when the McLaren pulled into the parking lot. I guess Wade had finally become worried about leaving it in Mike Church's weed-choked yard, because he was back behind the wheel of the silver race car. I gunned off some shots as he got out and sauntered casually into the building, hands in his pockets, like he was back at Harvard, going for an early drink at the Hasty Pudding Club. Today he was wearing shiny leather jeans and a thousand-dollar sports coat. Since I now had it on good authority that morality didn't come in shiny packages, I wasn't expecting too much from Wade in this outfit.

  At exactly one-ten, in came Tito Morales. I got shots as he exited his tan Mazda-car of the common man-and lugged a fat, worn briefcase into the campaign headquarters. I wondered what was in that case. As I'd told Scout, I couldn't just go in there and rifle the files. No warrant, no probable cause, and within twenty-four hours, probably no badge. Should it become necessary to access anything in this campaign headquarters, it was going to have to be a black-bag job done at midnight. For now, I'd just have to rely on guile.

  Nothing happened for a while, so I pulled out the spiral notebook and started to make entries in my Alexa log, bringing it up to date. I added the fact that she had finally admitted to her car accident and noted that she had also told me about having convulsions. When I got around to my feelings about all of this, I realized that I was mostly sad, disenfranchised, and lonely. I had also started to project a dismal future for us. Was my relationship with Alexa finally coming to an end? If her dark, destructive moods were just something that had happened a few times, I wouldn't have been having such dire thoughts. But this behavior had been going on for almost a year and I was finding it harder and harder to hold on.

  Then I remembered a patrolman named Bart Cook who'd gone through the academy with me. A few years after we graduated, he married a patrol car officer named Brenda. One night, while his wife was on patrol, she'd tried to arrest a guy who got belligerent after a traffic stop. He suddenly pulled a gun, fired, and severed her spinal column, paralyzing her. My academy friend had left the department and gotten a job in phone sales so he could stay home and care for her. He'd been doing that for almost ten years. The memory made me feel small and cheap. In the face of that, even writing all this junk down seemed like an act of betrayal. I made a promise to myself to see this through, no matter what. Dr. Lusk had cautioned me that my feelings were what they were, and that it did no good to deny them. But didn't I have a deeper obligation than just to myself? I closed the journal and stashed it out of sight under the seat, hating myself for my selfishness.

  Just before two o'clock I got another surprise. Lt. Brian Devine pulled in. He parked his department issue Crown Victoria next to the silver McLaren and glared at it as if he was considering having it booted. Click, click, click-the auto drive on my camera fired off half a dozen shots. Then Devine went for a boot of a whole different kind. He kicked the half-million-dollar silver sports car in the rear-quarter panel with the sole of his Brogan. Click, clicky click. I could see the brownish divot he left from all the way across the street. He leaned down and looked carefully at the rear panel, seemed satisfied with his scuff mark, and walked brusquely through the rear door of Tito Morales's campaign headquarters.

  I didn't know what I was witnessing, but anytime there's friction inside a criminal conspiracy, it's always a law enforcement plus.

  At three-fifteen, the side door to the headquarters opened. Brian Devine and Tito Morales spilled angrily out into the parking lot. I started snapping shots. Lt. Devine was waving his fist at Tito in rage. Hardly a smart way for a Valley police lieutenant to treat L. A.'s leading mayoral candidate. Right now, Tito Morales didn't look much like a heroic crusader. He didn't look overly concerned with moral-A-T. He looked like he wanted to tear Brian Devine a new asshole. They stood in the shade at the side of the campaign headquarters, faces purple with rage, screaming at each other. Both men were totally out of control.

  Then Brian turned, got into his gray Crown Victoria, and powered out of the parking lot, heading east on Magnolia. I ducked down as he roared past.

  "Fuck you, codelincuenter I heard Tito scream after him, before heading back inside.

  Chapter 19

  Tito Morales and Wade Wyatt both came out of the headquarters together about fifteen minutes later. I shot some more film as they talked. After a minute in the parking lot, Tito got into his Mazda, Wade into the McLaren, and they took off in separate directions. I stuck with Wade Wyatt and the half-million-dollar McLaren because Morales was probably just heading back to the courthouse.

  The Mercedes left Van Nuys and took the 101 Freeway heading east. As I drove through a warm summer afternoon, I was glad that the Alaskan cold front had finally passed through. Angelenos are spoiled by our weather, and this magnificent day was one of the reasons. The usually brown San Gabriel Mountains were cloaked with emerald green from recent rains. They framed the north side of the Basin, ris
ing majestically into a cloudless, smog-free sky. Tonight, people all over the Valley would be snatching the canvas covers off their barbeques. Unfortunately, I wouldn't be one of them.

  Wade transitioned onto the 5 Freeway and once he neared Sun-land, he shot down the off-ramp north of the Glendale-Burbank Airport. We were driving through a manufacturing district. In the forties, this was all World War II factory space where B-25's and other aeronautic weaponry had been designed and built under these same bow-truss roofs, then trucked a few miles to Burbank Field to be test-flown before being shipped overseas. Many of the same old structures remained, but most had been refaced and today looked almost new. The area was now zoned for light manufacturing, but the shoulder-to-shoulder placement of the buildings remained. They were lined up along Bradley Avenue like soldiers at parade rest.

  Wade seemed to know where he was going and took all the corners way too fast, turning off Bradley onto Penrose Street. Then he slowed down before flipping the silver McLaren carelessly into a large, gated factory parking lot that fronted a line of new concrete, tilt-up buildings identified by a sign that said:

  CARTCO

  SERVING AMERICA'S CONTAINER NEEDS

  WORLDWIDE

  Wade Wyatt had his own parking place in the executive section. He lifted the McLaren's exotic gull-wing door and stepped out. The front gate remained open during business hours, the guard shack, empty. As a result, I pulled in unmolested and parked. The rear end of my Acura still looked like I'd just lost an elimination event at a destruction derby.

  I watched as Wade, in his rock star leather pants and sports coat, entered a two-story structure marked business center-administration building.

  This case was touching one of L. A.'s major power brokers, so caution now dominated my impulsive brain chemistry.

  Wade had told me that his uncle owned this place. I certainly didn't want to add Aubry Wyatt's brother to my crowded I. A. case, but I was running out of time. If I wanted answers, I was going to need to take a few chances.