Three shirt deal ss-7 Read online

  Most gang members are in it for the relatively easy money or to clique up for protection. The membership quickly separates into several criminal levels. At the low end are the 7-Eleven beer run bandits who clout refreshments for weekend partying and chase girls. Next come the purse snatchers and car jackers, then the narcotics dealers with their crew of lookouts and runners. The very top of the criminal pyramid was where you found the designated hitters-guys who were called in to make blood flow-retribution killers and assassination shooters.

  By the age of seventeen, Miguel Iglesia, aka Mike Church, had been busted three times on aggravated assault and twice for suspicion of murder, but the Van Nuys D. A. had been unable to put either murder beef on him. All of this court and street action had only resulted in a short stretch at the California Youth Authority.

  In his file under "Unusual Hobbies" the gang squad had noted that he liked to ride Colossus, the big wooden roller-coaster out at Magic Mountain.

  His booking photo showed a glowering, thick-necked, twenty-five-year-old with pockmarked skin and a black Brillo pad-textured moustache and beard.

  We pulled up in front of Church's house on Califa Street in Van Nuys, a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. The houses were old and half the residents had elected to park the family cars on their front lawn.

  Scout and I sat across the street in my Acura, which was beginning to feel like a pearl button on a work shirt. Young men in lowered vintage Fords and Chevys drove by and hungrily scoped my ride.

  "Whatta we do?" Secada asked, looking at Church's rundown house, which was old and large, with weed-choked flowerbeds.

  "Let's run some of these plates," I replied. "I always like to get the player roster before getting in a game."

  We started picking out tag numbers from the five or six cars parked in front of Church's house and on his lawn. I fed them to Scout who had the dash mike from my Rover in her hand.

  "Wants, warrants, and DMV on Adam-Sierra-Ida-six-six-five." Seconds later the records division spit back a name.

  "Jose Diego," the RTO said. "Six-sixty-four Woodman Avenue, Van Nuys. Jose Diego has outstanding warrants for failure to appear, unlawful detention, and assault."

  The RTO went on to report that Diego's gang name was "Torch." His gang affiliation, the Vanowen Street Locos. It went on like that. Most of the cars that we ran showed owners with paper pending. One belonged to a guy named Tyler Cisneros who our records department said was a VSL shot caller with the street name "Little Loco." It seemed Mike Church's crib was a gang hookup. I didn't want to just call for more cops and arrest these people, even though some had outstanding warrants, because that would put both of us in big trouble with Jane Sasso. It would also close down this thread in our investigation. So it seemed this teepee full of veteranos was going to get a temporary pass.

  Some kind of sports car was parked in the drive under a car cover. It looked low and expensive. The cover couldn't quite hide the vehicle's wide stance and elegant design.

  "Wonder what the hell that is?" I pointed at the car. "Looks expensive. Whatta ya bet it's stolen. Can you make out the plate?"

  "Nope. Want me to go ever there and check it out?"

  "Better let me do it."

  "This is a Mexican block. Your Wonder Bread ass won't last ten seconds. I'll do my homegirl thing."

  "In a designer pantsuit. Good luck with that."

  She started to roll up the legs on her expensive tan pants and took off her scarf. Then she stripped off her tan jacket, showing a white silk shirt with a pointed collar. "You got a raincoat or anything in the back?"

  "Yeah, but its EPA rating is beyond biohazard."

  "The grimier, the better."

  I went around back and got it while she folded her scarf into a bandana then tied it over her head. She put on the rumpled raincoat I gave her, then leaned over the seat and started digging around in the back. I had a paper shopping bag back there that we'd used when we bought Chooch's school books from USC last week. She took it and stuffed her suit jacket inside.

  Then she turned and looked at me. "Te gustan mis ropas, sehor

  It was an amazing transformation. In seconds, she had turned herself from Jennifer Lopez into a Mission Street cholla.

  "See ya in a minute. Stay in the car," she cautioned, then crossed the street and limped down the block. I watched her sneak onto Church's property, and slip across his brown lawn toward the low car in the driveway. She knelt down behind the vehicle and pulled up the car cover, exposing the plate. As she was writing down the tag number, the front door to the house was suddenly thrown open, and four tattooed guys wearing wife-beater tees and head-wraps ran out, screaming at her.

  The lead guy had to be Mike Church. He was a hulking six-foot-three steroid case who weighed over three hundred pounds. His basketball-size head sat low on water buffalo shoulders.

  "The fuck you think you're doin'?" Church screamed and grabbed Secada by the collar of my grimy raincoat, yanking her to her feet.

  "LAPD. Back off, asshole!" I heard her scream, but in the next second they had thrown her to the ground. Her prop bag with her wadded-up suit jacket fell open as they proned her out face down in the dirt.

  I was out of the Acura the second I saw them. I started by circling around the rear of my car, staying out of sight. I was going to need the element of surprise. Church was now holding Scout's gun, kneeling heavily on her back. They were all staring down and didn't see me coming from across the street. I couldn't figure out how they had been alerted so easily to her presence unless they had motion sensors covering the front of the house. I'd seen drug houses with sensors like that in the past.

  In order to get to an effective firing position I had to cross the lawn. I pulled my short barrel 38 and ran lightly, trying to muffle the sound of my approaching footsteps by staying on the dead grass. The short-barreled Air Light magnum felt small and insignificant in my right hand. As I neared the five of them, Church yanked Scout up off the grass and pulled her violently toward him.

  "Why you fuckin' with my ride, bitch?" Then before she could answer Church yanked the scarf off her head, freeing a pound of lustrous black hair.

  "Back off. I'm police," she shouted at him.

  "Slow down, homie," one of the vatos exclaimed. "She's popo. This chica's muy guapa, tambien?"

  I saw a vein throbbing on Mike Church's forehead as he reached out and grabbed a handful of Scout's hair, yanking her painfully closer. Then he pointed her gun at her. "That's nothing to me. I killed plenty a cops." He pulled back the hammer on the gun.

  I didn't trust him not to do it. I wasn't quite where I wanted to be yet, but I was out of time.

  "Hey, Miguel," I said softly. "Fire that and you're in the obits."

  I was close enough, so I didn't have to shout. I wanted it to be a whisper, to sound a little crazy.

  "The fuck?" He turned slightly so he could see me. I was behind him on his left, my gun pointed directly at the back of his huge head.

  "I ain't bagged me no fat, outta-shape whales in a while. Do exactly what I say or you're a fucking grease stain on the pavement here. Now put the gun down, step away. Get going. You're on the clock, asshole."

  He stood there, not sure of what to do. I had him dead to rights. He looked spooked. "What is this?" he finally said as he stood there trying to calculate his odds.

  They were all packing but, except for Mike, nobody had a gun out yet. If I wanted to control this, I had to act crazy enough to convince them to back off. Everyone's afraid of crazies, even VSL killers.

  "Let go of her. Drop the gun." Then I giggled to add a little insanity to the moment.

  After almost ten agonizing seconds, Church let go of Scout's hair and slowly lowered the gun, letting it fall at his side.

  "Good. Now give her the gun back."

  "Fuck you," Church snarled.

  "You're on my wish list. I'm two seconds from pulling your drapes."

  He looked at Scout, then tossed the Smith and Wesson at he
r. It landed at her feet. She scooped it up and immediately aimed it at the other three guys.

  "This is private property," he said. "If you're cops, where's your fuckin' warrant?"

  Scout waved her gun at him. "This is my warrant," she hissed. Then we both backed across the street to the Acura and got in. I started the car.

  "Shit!" she said, once we were inside. "I left the bag with my suit jacket on the lawn."

  "Leave it."

  "That outfit cost me six hundred bucks," she complained as I put the car in gear and squealed up the street. Still pissed at herself, Scout grabbed the dashboard mike and called in the plate number from the sports car. "This is L-fifty-six. Warrants and DMV for Adam-Boy-Victor-one-nine-three."

  "Roger, L-fifty-six. Stand by."

  She turned to me. "It's some kind of Mercedes. I saw the emblem. A big, new, expensive one."

  The mike crackled. "L-fifty-six, on your tag number. That plate comes back as a two-thousand-eight Mercedes McLaren registered to Wade A. Wyatt at three-eighty-seven Bel Air Road in Bel Air. No wants or warrants."

  "You sure it's clean?" Scout asked. "Check recent stolens."

  There was a pause, then, "No wants," the RTO confirmed.

  Secada hung up the mike and looked over at me. "A McLaren. Isn't that worth a pile of money?"

  "Like about half a mil."

  "Not to be racial profiling or anything, but what the hell is a half-a-million-dollar race car doing on that dickhead's front lawn?

  "Good question." I looked over at her and saw a faint smile play on her face in the passing streetlights.

  "Something funny?"

  "You were amazing. I actually thought you'd gone bug house myself."

  "It was a bad situation. We needed to turn a corner. It was all I could come up with."

  "We're onto something here, Scully. Can't you feel it? This case has a heartbeat."

  "Yeah. Let's just hope they don't find out who we are before we can put it down."

  "Don't worry. They won't," she said, as she put her gun back into her holster, then started fumbling around on her belt. I saw a look of alarm pass across her face.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Put a hold on that," she said, then slammed her palm on the dash in frustration. "What?"

  "When I was proned out, eating dirt, Church musta stole my badge."

  Chapter 8

  "This is gonna cause a pile of trouble," Scout said. We were parked in the lot behind La Golondrina, two spots over from her slick-back detective car. It was nine-thirty p. M. "One of the investigating officers in our unit had her purse stolen a while back- lost her badge. It's a whole rigamarole. First, I gotta notify my supervisor, Captain Sasso, how I lost my ID, and you know that's gonna turn into a mud fight. Next, she's gotta send a teletype through the whole damn department with my badge number. Then an area headquarters team has to maintain the list of lost badge numbers indefinitely and send 'em each month to all divisions and station houses. Looks like I just blew our covert investigation."

  "Just tell Sasso the purse was stolen, same as your IOs. Don't tell her we were over giving Mike Church a chest bump. If you tell her that, we're screwed."

  "Except I don't like lying."

  "That's ridiculous. Lying is the first great art of police science."

  "Yeah, right. For you, maybe." She got out of the car, then turned and looked back in at me. "Anyway, thanks for the rescue."

  We looked at each other. We had bonded over the dustup in Church's yard, and we both knew it.

  Finally, I said, "Secada's such a pretty name, why don't you use it? What's with the Scout thing?"

  "There're two theories on that," she smiled. "One is because I'm always out in front."

  "I saw that."

  "The other reason is my last name. Llevar. In Spanish, Llevar means 'to lead.'"

  Secada left and I called Alexa. She was still at the office but said she'd be home in an hour or so.

  "You're not gonna have a change of heart, like last night, are you?" I said.

  "No, not tonight. I gotta get outta here. My brain is broken. I need a drink. I'll see you at the house."

  I hung up and took the freeway heading for Bel Air. On the way I radioed Records and Identification and asked them for a deep check on Wade A. Wyatt, giving the 387 Bel Air Road address.

  While I waited for them to come back to me, I transferred to the 101 Freeway heading toward the 405. Then the radio crackled.

  "L-fifty-six. On your background check for Wade A. Wyatt. Subject is a white male. Twenty-six years. Six-two, one hundred eighty-two pounds. Brown hair, brown eyes. He has two arrests for possession of narcotics. One in two thousand, the other in two-thousand-four. Both busts were expunged. He is the only son of Aubrey and Beverly Wyatt, same address. His father's a well-known L. A. attorney."

  "Yeah, I know who Aubrey Wyatt is. Thanks."

  I hung up but almost missed the interchange to the 405 because I was wondering how Aubrey Wyatt fit into this. He was one of L. A.'s biggest movers and shakers. A letterhead founding partner of the law firm Wyatt, Clark, and Cummings. Aubrey Wyatt was definitely somebody who could throw around some weight in this town, which his son's two expunged drug busts certainly proved.

  I took the 405 to Sunset and headed east. After fifteen minutes I pulled up in front of Aubrey Wyatt's mansion on Bel Air Road.

  The house was a gorgeous, oversize French Normandy with a slate roof and lots of blond stonework. It sat on over an acre of property with a beautifully manicured lawn that sloped from the front porch to the street where an eight-foot-high wrought-iron fence protected the estate. There was an electric gate with gold-tipped spears. I wondered if French horns would blare theatrically when it opened.

  I parked across the street and looked at the beautifully landscaped property wondering what to do next. One thing was obvious. This was a much more appropriate address for the McLaren.

  Just as I was pondering my next move, the solenoids on the gate started clicking and the heavy wrought iron swung slowly open. Seconds later, a red sports car flew down the drive and bounced hard as it hit the street. The front undercarriage left a little trail of sparks as it powered out of a right-hand turn, almost clipping my car before it sped away up the street going well over the speed limit. I'm not an expert on exotic cars, but I thought this one was a Ferrari Enzo, which if I remembered correctly, is a limited edition model worth close to a million dollars. The car was going fifty by the time it hit the end of the block.

  A lot of law enforcement is just playing hunches. If I'd stopped to think about it, I probably would have let him go, but I didn't stop. On an impulse, I put the Acura in gear, spun a smoking U-turn and headed after the million-dollar sports car.

  It was hard to catch. Whoever was behind the wheel was way over the speed limit and paying little attention to traffic laws.

  Finally, I got close enough and gave the siren hidden under the hood a growl. I also flashed the red lights the police garage had installed in the Acura's chrome grill. The Enzo didn't slow, so I pulled up on his bumper and hit the wailer again, this time letting it go for twenty seconds. My red lights flashed manically, strobe-lighting the big trunk of the midengine Ferrari. The car finally pulled to the curb. Before I even got out of my MDX I had already worked up a healthy dislike for the driver. As I crossed to the car I pulled out my badge.

  When the window of the Ferrari came down, I was looking down at a handsome young man in an expensive black leather jacket. His left hand was up on the wheel and I could see a ten-thousand-dollar Presidential Rolex on his wrist.

  At that exact moment, the silver and black BlackBerry on the passenger seat rang. He picked it up.

  "Shut that off. You're not available," I told him.

  "Gotta go," he said into the phone and then shut it down.

  "License and registration," I said.

  "Come on, a traffic bust? Give me a fucking break."

  "Hey, you almost hit me coming out of
that driveway."

  "It's my street," he said defiantly. "I've got someplace I've got to go.

  "Your street? You really gonna stick with that?" I was smiling at him. It was my wide, humorless smile that contained no warmth. It hung on my face like a vacant warning. "Gimme your license and registration or you're going to the Men's Central Jail," I told him.

  "Jesus." He leaned over, grabbed the registration out of the glove box and thrust it angrily through the window at me along with his license. I took my time looking them over.

  "You're Wade Wyatt?"

  "That's what is says, doesn't it?"

  "You better rein in some of that attitude, Wade. It's not getting you where you want to be."

  He glanced impatiently at his expensive Rolex, then looked at me with disdain as I continued to check his registration.

  "This car is registered to Aubrey Wyatt," I said. "My father. It's his car. I have his permission to use it, of course."

  I leaned in. "Listen, Wade, I was just coming over to see you when you spun out of that driveway and almost clipped me." "See me? What for?"

  I played out a little line. "Some Hispanic guy in the Valley is driving around in your Mercedes McLaren. The oh-eight. I couldn't catch him, but he didn't look like his name should be Wade Wyatt. I was wondering if the car was stolen."

  "Look, there's no problem. It's okay for him to use it. I'm really late. I've got an important appointment. Do we have to do this at ten o'clock at night?" "Where are you going?" "None of your business."

  "So tell me, what's your connection to Mike Church?" "Mike who?"

  "Mike Church. The guy you're letting drive the McLaren."

  "Oh, him."

  "Yeah, him."

  "I hardly know the guy."

  "You hardly know him, but you let him tool around in your half-million-dollar car?"

  "He's a good mechanic, okay? The McLaren was having trouble with the suspension and Mike what's-his-face was taking a look at it for us. I guess he's gotta test drive it to fix it, okay?"