MOSAICS: A Thriller Page 5

  I hit the brass bell on the counter. An annoyed voice replied, “We’re full.”

  I flipped my badge wallet and held it up. “Try again, dude.”

  Bored eyes came forward from the back door and squinted at the badge. They rolled unhappily in their orbs and disappeared again. Papers rustled, drawers closed, the radio shut up. I inhaled, but didn’t smell anything alarming other than rusty pipes, tobacco wads, and the lingering tang of refried beans.

  The eyes came in full view under a strip of forehead beaded with sweat. Black brows shot up with a pinch of anxiety. “The place is clean,” the man said, wobbling to the counter. “And my papers are all in order.” He made a vague gesture toward the back.

  I propped my elbows on the counter. “You the manager here?”

  He brushed a nervous finger along the sides of a mustache that had seen blacker days. “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re looking for a man named Ricky Vargas,” I said.

  The manager’s shoulders relaxed, his brows came down a notch. “Never heard of him.”

  Satish pulled out the mug shot. “Never seen him either?”

  I rapped the countertop. “You know, maybe we should take a look at those papers you mentioned—”

  “No.” He pointed at the photo. “Him—He goes by Ralph. Owes me a full month.”

  “He in?”

  His eyes darted back and forth between us. “You make him pay, yes?”

  Sat and I exchanged a quick glance. “Get the key and take us to his room.”

  “I can’t leave the desk! I have to answer the phone, and—”

  I patted my holster. “I hope you have a good locksmith, then.”

  His face swelled up like a puffer fish. “One second.” He sank back in his chair, swiveled it around to a cabinet drawer and retrieved the key from one of the drawers.

  We followed him outside through the back door. The sun glistened off the car roofs parked in the court. Two kids were playing hopscotch in the driveway of the adjacent apartment building. Everything else was as still as a postcard.

  I scanned the windows of the upper floor as we filed up the stairs. “Do the rooms have back doors?”

  The manager shook his head. “Windows and fire stairs. And smoke detectors. All compliant, eh? All in order.” His words turned into wheezing as he huffed up the stairs. “Your friends, last time they came, they reported this and that, and safety hazards, and—”

  “They’re not our friends. Which door?”

  He lifted his first chin and pointed ahead. “Room two-eighteen.”

  We covered the sides of the door. Satish banged once. We heard nothing. I inhaled. “With goods,” I confirmed. I flattened myself on the hinge side and drew my Glock. Satish banged again.

  A feeble “Yeah?” percolated through the door.

  “Management.”

  There were steps, padding over carpet. Something dropped. Then more steps, away from the door this time.

  Satish beckoned to the manager. “Hey, I hear a moan inside, don’t you?”

  “Huh?”

  “The door,” I growled. “You want it to go bang?”

  The man fumbled with the key in the lock. As soon as the lock clicked I kicked the door and yelled the customary “Freeze, asshole!” A draft from the open window at the back of the room made the curtains billow. On top of the fridge, the microwave’s door hung open and yawned a familiar reek of burnt plastic. A heap of bed covers was piled on the floor, and the mattress still smelled of human heat and the last remnants of crack smoke. A lamp had fallen off the side table.

  I ran to the window, Sat checked the bathroom.

  “Careful with the TV,” the manager mumbled over short breaths. “I just replaced it. And no messing with the carpet. Blood especially—”

  A square had been cut out of the window screen. I leaned out and spotted the asshole running down the emergency ladder.

  “Fire stairs!” I yelled. Man runs, cops split. I holstered the Glock and climbed out on the windowsill. The drop was about twelve feet—not worth the risk. To my right, the metal frame of the fire escape rattled with Vargas’s steps. I grasped the lintel with one hand, reached for the railing with the other, and swung over. Pain shot up my spine. I ignored it.

  Feet dangling, I grasped the top banister with both hands, pulled myself up, hopped onto the fire escape and started down the stairs, the wall behind me radiating heat like a nervous animal. I cussed the dress shoes and fucking business attire.

  Vargas jumped down the last flight, landed on a heap of abandoned tires, and vanished into a narrow alley lined with corrugated metal sheets and the slashed skeleton of an old couch. I jumped over the railing and leaped after him, following his adrenaline trail over the reek of urine and trash bins, the sky above me lined with cables and rusty clotheslines.

  Pain gnawed my lower back. I ground my teeth and kept pursuit.

  Vargas climbed over a fence, tripped on landing, scrambled back up, spotted Satish at the end of the road, and doubled back across the street. A red Nissan was pulling to the curb. The driver barely had the time to unbuckle before Vargas opened the driver’s door, yanked him off the wheel and shoved him to the ground. He didn’t get very far after that. Pain hammering through my chest, I pounced from behind and brought him down, face eating the pavement and Glock pressed against the back of his head.

  “Don’t shoot,” he squealed.

  I swallowed, barrel unmoving.

  The pain was making me blind with rage.

  I clutched Vargas’s arms with my left hand and blocked his lower body with my right knee and leg. Satish came from behind and snapped the cuffs around one of his wrists.

  “Track,” he said.

  I shifted. Vargas slowly peeled his face off the pavement. Blood crept down his nose. “Tell ’im not to shoot. I ain’t done nothin’, man…”

  I stepped aside and leaned against the fence, breathing heavily, waiting for the pain to ebb off.

  Same pain as last time.

  Satish pulled Vargas to his feet and pressed a handkerchief against his forehead. “Hold this to your head and take a good look at what we found in your room.” He shoved a baggie of rocks in front of his eyes. “This how you support your mama? Your parole agent will be thrilled.”

  “No, man—”

  The Nissan owner scrambled back to his feet and watched us from a cautionary distance. A few more faces emerged along the sidewalk, a residential block of pink and gray bungalows fenced by black metal railings.

  I inhaled, waited for the pain to wane, then leaned inside the Nissan, turned the engine off, and tossed the keys to its owner.

  “Show’s over!” I yelled to the rubberneckers.

  Satish was already walking back toward the motel, towing a limping Vargas by the cuffs. The rubberneckers dispersed. I stood under the sun, catching my breath.

  It’s the heat, I told myself. I thought of Watanabe’s little chat on Newton’s pendulum, I thought of genes, and then I thought of the heat again.

  That’s all it is. It’s just the heat.

  I took a deep breath and sprinted after my partner.

  Satish shoved Vargas in the back of my vehicle. The manager came out of the lobby to inquire about the status of his finances. “He payin’?”

  “Not this time. His deal just fell through the cracks,” I replied. “Pun intended.”

  He made a face and retreated to his haven.

  My partner stared at me. “The hell were you thinkin’?”

  “What d’you think I was thinkin’?” We have a broad vocabulary, us coppers.

  He shook his head, Western way this time, and held up the bag of crack rocks. “What are we gonna do with these?”

  I loosened the knot of my tie. “What d’you mean? We violate him. We got him for possession.”

  “No probable cause, Track. That’s what I mean.”

  “So? He ran. Even if we get a reject, his parole agent can still request a hearing.”


  “You could’ve blown his head off.”

  “He could’ve been armed! You got one to the chest last year for a caper like this, you forgot that?”

  “And you must’ve missed the Force Investigation Division pretty badly.”

  I hooked my hands on my belt and shook my head. I hated the FIDs as much as they hated my guts for every time I’d squeezed the trigger on duty. In fact, they were the very reason I’d been away from the LAPD for so long.

  “Track, we nab Vargas for a couple of rocks, the hell he cooperates. We cut the guy a little slack, treat him nice and smooth, and he might give us somethin’.”

  “And confess to murder?”

  He gave me one of his Satish looks.

  “Don’t give me the Vaseline crap,” I said.

  He grinned. “You know it’s the perfect metaphor.”

  “What if he doesn’t give us any juice?”

  “In that case, we’ve used the Vaseline and we can all go home happy.” He flashed me one of his smiles, white teeth framed by chocolate lips. “Get in the car and have a cig. I’m gonna handle this.”

  I tossed him the car keys. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Then maybe it’s a good time to start.”

  “Fuck off, Sat.”

  FIVE

  ____________

  Ricky Vargas rocked in his chair. He had the rugged smell of somebody who’d been on the run long enough to consider the street his home and a daily joint his pacifier. From time to time, he’d slip forward, lose his balance, and then slide backwards again, pulling himself up as if somebody had just smacked him out of a trance. His left brow was split open in the middle and his nose was purple and swollen from when he’d eaten the pavement. A tattooed red and green lizard spilled out of the back of his black A-shirt onto his tanned shoulders. Its red eye ogled me sternly. On each arm he had the insignia of the Eighteenth Street gang—the numbers one and eight in black ink.

  Satish pushed a tape recorder toward the middle of the table. Vargas bulged his eyes.

  “What’s that for, man?”

  Satish’s voice was as soothing as a lozenge. “Just so I don’t forget our conversation. I’m old and I tend to forget things. Want a Coke?”

  Vargas nodded and asked for a cig, too.

  “Tell you what. We start chatting, you and I, then you can have a cig.” Satish leaned forward across the table. “But you gotta answer my questions, Ricky. My partner’s pissed off already.”

  Vargas shot me a nervous glance. We’d gotten him into one of our interview cubicles at the back of the squad room. We didn’t mention his drug caper, he never complained about his beauty treatment. Over two bottles of Coke, Vargas told us about the job his uncle and he did at Amy Liu’s house.

  “Who designed the mosaic?”

  He frowned. “You mean the artsy thing? My uncle did that. He’s real good with that stuff. The lady gave him a picture.”

  “What did you guys do with the leftover tiles?”

  “We left them there. She’d bought the stuff herself.”

  Satish sent me a sideway glance. There was nothing in the garage or backyard. She could’ve already gotten rid of it, though.

  I stopped pacing and sat at the table. “You ever go back to her house at night, Ricky?”

  His eyes widened. “No, sir. Me? Why?” His knees rattled. He wrung his tattooed arms, hands cracked and tanned beyond their nineteen years of age.

  I leaned on my elbows. “Why? I’ll tell you why. Because the lady was pretty, for one thing. And she had money. And the two things together are usually appealing to a piece of scum like you. You know what we found on her body? A hair. Our guys are extracting DNA as we speak. Makes me want to have a chat with your parole agent—”

  “No! I—”

  “Okay, let’s take a breather.” Satish laid a hand on the table and locked eyes with Vargas. “Ricky. You wanna make me and my partner happy? You want us to forget that you gave us a sweat over a bunch of rocks?”

  He nodded.

  “Then give us something, okay? The lady’s dead. You worked on her yard. There’s something puzzling about the way she died and about that sun your uncle made for her.”

  “Remember how pretty she was?” I said, opening a folder on the table. “This is what she looks like now.”

  Vargas’s eyes fell on the picture and then skid away like bullets bouncing off metal. “Whoa. I ain’t done that, man. No way. No way I’d do somethin’ like that.” He swallowed hard, then stared at us, heavy eyebrows slanting up like the head of an arrow. His childish features were darkened by a two-day stubble and polluted by street life.

  “Make us believe you,” I said.

  He ground his teeth and mused. “Suppose a guy was there to—uh—take a stroll or somethin’. But he ain’t done nothing,” he quickly added. His eyes strayed back to me. “That hair ain’t mine, man.”

  Satish stretched one corner of his mouth. “Suppose the guy gave us something useful.”

  He wrung his arm harder. “No, man, I—Look. She was nice to us, okay? Even offered me a cig from time to time. She’d come out and share a drag. Not like those rich ladies with all the stink up their noses. Yeah, she was pretty. She got somebody to warm up her sheets at night. Why don’t you look him up?”

  Sat and I exchanged glances. Maybe Ricky was going to be useful, after all.

  “You take a good look at her man, Ricky?” Satish asked.

  “I saw his car. Was there that night—” He caught himself short, then stared at us like a deer stunned on its path. I knew that look. “The stuff,” he said softly. “I ain’t—”

  “What stuff?” Satish replied. “Tell us about Amy’s man.”

  “I never saw the guy. I’d see the car parked in the driveway. Audi, A8, one of the pretty ones.”

  “What color?”

  “Silver, I think…”

  I slammed my hand on the table. “You think? Sat, this turd thinks he can fool us. I say we send him back to the joint and wait for the DNA results.”

  Satish indulged in his brotherly smile. “Give us something Ricky, or else we’ve got no choice.”

  Vargas’s voice cracked in shrills. “Look—Silver! Definitely silver.”

  “And how do you know it was the boyfriend if you never saw him?”

  He sneered, and for a moment, the adrenaline in his perspiration ebbed off. “I got ears, okay?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “That’s hardly anything we can work with, buddy. You gotta give us something more if you want those rocks to go down the toilet.”

  His perspiration spiked again. He rubbed his cheek, forehead shiny with sweat. I inhaled. Sour, spiced with the nice cocktails he smoked and sold. “I was with a girlfriend. She can tell you I ain’t done nothing.”

  I passed him a pen. “Write your friend’s name and number.”

  He took the pen and fiddled with it. “That night. The car was there. Not in the driveway. A few yards down the road. My friend saw it, too.”

  “What were you doing there, you and your friend?”

  He shrugged one shoulder, gave us a pale little smile. “I told her the lady was nice. Lived in a nice house. She said she wanted to see it. So we grabbed the bike and went. You know. Just to do somethin’.”

  Satish pointed to the pen. “Your lady friend’s number.”

  He wrote it down. Satish grabbed the piece of paper and walked out of the cubicle. Vargas frowned. “Where’s he going with that?”

  I smiled. “Some girlfriends have a short memory—better catch them early. You sure it was the same car?”

  He shrugged. The lizard on his shoulder winked. “It was an Audi. Nice cars those are. They make a smooth rumble, Audis. They do.”

  “Yeah, we all love ’em. Keep talking, dude.”

  “It was kinda late, but the lights were on in the lady’s house, and me and my friend—we just wanted to take a peek inside the fine car,’ ya know? So I stop, and the streetlight ain’t working, but my
girl starts screeching that there’s a dead body inside the car.”

  I blinked. “In the car?”

  Vargas started playing with the label on the Coke bottle. He nodded. “I only took a glimpse. Saw a shadow in the back. Maybe somebody’s sleeping—dunno. My girl gets scared and wants to leave. I tell her to get ahold of herself. The dude in the back of the car probably high or somethin’. I turn around the bike just the same and ride around the block. Then I go back, cuz I want to take a better look, ya know? Right as we’re rolling by the house, this other dude comes out of the lady’s house. Running. Gets in the car and guns off. Must’ve been drunk or something. Almost took the curb away with him.”

  “The other dude being Amy’s boyfriend?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re sure about it? Same guy you saw at her house other times?”

  He nodded again.

  “What time was it?”

  “’Round two. Only crickets out that early.”

  “Yeah. Crickets and loons looking for trouble.”

  And us coppers love our loons. Especially when they start chirping.

  * * *

  I dropped in my chair, opened the drawer—now properly replenished with my usual junk—grabbed a paperclip, bent it, and stuck it between my teeth. An officer from Northeast Community Station had delivered the Callahan murder book a few hours earlier, so I took the chance to examine it. Charlie Callahan, age twenty-eight, found dead behind the dumpster of his apartment building in Silver Lake, his face and neck mauled with acid, and the side of his head whacked. There were traces of meth in his pockets, but the tox results from the autopsy came back negative. The autopsy also determined the head injury had been caused from falling against the cinder brick wall after he was attacked. An eyewitness, a neighbor from the building next door, testified he’d seen Callahan exit from his apartment door to dump the trash. A few minutes later he saw a tall, blond man walk away from the driveway, though no car had come in.

  Two days after Callahan was found dead, a forty-two-year-old man who lived two blocks down the street was arrested on domestic violence charges. Sodden drunk, Malcolm Olsen had beaten his wife to a pulp. Investigators found numerous homophobic statements on his Facebook account and immediately raised a red flag. Another neighbor came forward saying he’d witnessed a heated argument between Olsen and the victim during which Olsen had not been shy about his anti-gay views. Charlie Callahan was gay and Olsen fit the wit’s description. His house and vehicles were turned inside out for a scrap of DNA. A loose telephone wire found in his trunk—compatible with whatever was left of the ligature mark on Callahan’s neck—was also tested for DNA. All results came back inconclusive: “RFU levels too low”—science jargon meaning it was negative with a chance of doubt.