Kind of Blue Read online

  My house was a place of long, brooding silences and sudden angry eruptions. The sadness was something so palpable that I felt that I could actually touch it, like a patch of fabric. As a child, letting myself experience any emotion, was simply too painful, so I chose not to feel anything. And I didn’t. But then, some little thing would set me off in school, and I would rage in the classroom, screaming at the teacher or pummeling a student who had irritated me, or throwing pencils against the blackboard. My mother would have to come to school and pick me up at the principal’s office. When my mother later told my father what had happened, he would snort contemptuously and say, “What have you got to be upset about? When I was your age I saw my father shot in a ditch.”

  Since visions of murdered relatives had tormented my childhood, I figured that in order to purify myself as an adult, I would do some killing of my own. I flew to Tel Aviv and, naïve and idealistic, enlisted in the Israeli Defense Forces. After two months of intensive Hebrew instruction and four and a half months of Tironut—basic training—I was selected for an elite Tzanhanim—paratrooper—unit. More than four hundred soldiers in my group started the brutal training. Only forty-three earned their red berets and wings, which we were awarded after a fifty-six-mile forced march, carrying full packs, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

  I then spent eleven months with a paratrooper recon unit patrolling the border in South Lebanon, ambushing Hezbollah guerrillas trying to slip into northern Israel. One frozen dawn, my ambush was ambushed. Blood streaming down my back from a shrapnel wound, I believed I was dying. But as my blood pressure dropped precipitously, I felt a lightheaded, eerie calm. If I was going to die, this was the way I wanted to go—trying to protect the lives of Jews.

  When I was released from the hospital, my unit was sent to the West Bank to deal with the first Intifada. My perception of the Israeli army—and of my own role as a soldier—was turned upside down. I spent my days chasing teenagers with rocks through the streets of their towns, not terrorists with AK-47s crossing into Israel; I was viewed by the Palestinians as a sadist, not a savior. I felt I was no longer protecting people, but repressing them. Still, whenever I hear about a suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus, or a Palestinian walking into a restaurant, maneuvering through a maze of strollers, and blowing up babies, young couples out for the evening, and pregnant women, I feel the urge to rejoin my old unit and mow down terrorists. Now, sipping my beer, listening to the music, I tried to expunge the images of severed limbs and shredded flesh.

  “Damn,” I grumbled. Duffy should have contacted me earlier. I was irritated that I had caught the case twenty-four hours after the murder, that the Harbor Division detectives had first crack at the fresh blood crime scene and the neighbors. I hoped Relovich’s relatives would provide me with some leads.

  If I could bag and tag this one quickly, maybe I would have time to work on the Patton homicide before I caught my next case. Fuck Duffy and his warnings. I would do it on the down low. During the past eleven months, I spent countless hours at home pouring over a Xerox copy of the murder book on my lap, searching for some trace, some hint of a lead that would spark a revelation. One afternoon, I decided to hit the streets and see what I could unearth. I started with Patton’s daughter. But before I could ask a question, she’d screamed at me, blamed me for getting her mother killed, and threw me out of the house.

  Apparently, she’d reported me to Internal Affairs, because the next day an I.A. lieutenant called me at home and warned me to stay away from the Patton case. I told him that because I was no longer a cop, I could look into any case I wanted—as a private citizen.

  “If I get another call about you nosing around, I’ll write a search warrant for your place,” he told me. “And if I find you’ve stashed any pages from the murder book—or anything else connected to the investigation—I’ll write you up myself for theft of city property.”

  That shut me up and kept me away from the investigation for a while. But the past few weeks, I had been thinking about ways to interview people connected to the case without I.A. finding out. Now that I was back on the job, I wouldn’t have to worry about that any more. I had the entrée I had been searching for.

  I downed the rest of the beer in a swallow, crossed the room to the sofa, and pressed replay. I stretched out and listened to the dazzling opening bars of “So What.” Closing my eyes, I thought about the blood splatter pattern, the broken window in the back of the house, the dried blood on the floor, the dealer on the street corner. And I thought about Relovich. He was not some anonymous, faceless victim, one of several dozen killed every month in the city. He had been a cop, a brave cop from what I had heard. I felt a kinship with him, a responsibility to a fellow officer.

  And I felt a kinship with his daughter. I knew what was ahead of her, the emotional scars she would bear, the pain she would endure. I knew that her father’s murder would be the defining element of her life. Just like the murder of my grandparents, my dozens of aunts and uncles and cousins had been the defining element in mine.

  I had investigated enough homicides to know that solving Relovich’s murder would bring no closure to his young daughter. Every homicide detective soon learns that closure is a myth, a sound-bite word people use to try to describe the ineffable. Still, I believed that solving the case would bring some solace to her. If I caught her father’s killer, it would provide her with a sense that there was some justice and order and meaning in the world—something I never had as a child—that terrible acts did not occur in a vacuum; that people who committed them were caught and punished. I wanted her to know that the killer who had created such sorrow in her life would suffer, too; that at least one man cared enough about her father to avenge his murder.

  CHAPTER 3

  I woke up, heart hammering in my chest, sweat streaming down my back. I quickly closed my eyes, but could not erase the image of Latisha Patton, her eyes as lifeless as a puppet’s, the side of her head blown off, her right arm extended, and her fingers splayed, rigor keeping them stiff until I arrived at the scene. As if she was reaching out to me, imploring me to help her.

  I glanced at my alarm clock: 3:15. I popped two Ambien, thrashed on the bed for about twenty minutes, until I finally dropped off.

  I awoke a few hours later, feeling feverish and exhausted. I lay on my back, head on my pillow, arms clasped behind my neck. When I began to see that corner of 54th and Figueroa again, I blinked hard. I mumbled to myself, “Enough!” If I was to keep my sanity, I had to get it out of my head. If I was going to make any headway with the Relovich homicide, I had to focus. I couldn’t afford to be crippled by the Patton case. I forced myself to exchange the images of one homicide scene for another, to contemplate the smudges of blood on Relovich’s floor, the blood splatter pattern on the wall, the broken window in back. A few minutes later, my alarm began to beep. I jumped out of bed, showered and shaved, and gulped down three Tylenol. When I finished dressing, I opened the door of a wooden cabinet, reached into the back, pulled out my .45-caliber Beretta Cougar, which was encased in a leather shoulder holster, and slipped it on.

  When I worked patrol I always carried a backup gun: a hammerless .38-caliber two-incher Smith & Wesson Airweight, which I kept in an ankle holster. But when I made detective, I stashed the gun in a drawer. I didn’t want to be sitting across from a timid witness, cross my legs, and have the pistol peeking out from underneath my pant legs. Most cops, when they left the street and made detective, abandoned their backup guns. Some became so blasé that they even left their service weapons in their desk drawers when they left the building for interviews. I was always the more paranoid type. When I started working as a detective trainee and exchanged my uniform for a suit, I purchased a little two-shot .22 caliber derringer that I kept in my pocket as a backup. I reached into the cabinet, pulled out the derringer from a dusty corner, balanced it on my palm for a moment, then jammed it into my right front pocket.

  By seven, I was walking toward Little Tokyo. It wa
s sunny and clear and the sky, not yet veiled with the inevitable sand-colored scrim of smog, was a radiant blue. The office workers were at home, and the streets were deserted. There was an anomalous sense of calm, a welcomed respite from the usual downtown frenzy. I could even hear the occasional chirping of a bird. It felt good to start out a day with the distraction of something important to do.

  I knew that people who passed me on the street wouldn’t have guessed that I was a cop. I wore a muted green Zegna suit, pale blue Egyptian cotton shirt, and Armani silk tie. Few detectives who worked downtown paid full price for their clothing; most, like me, shopped at the handful of fashion district wholesale outlets that sold LAPD officers suits at a discount. I bought my suits at Glickman’s Menswear, a small shop on Santee Street. The owner, Murray Glickman, a stooped over man in his eighties, was so surprised and pleased that a homicide detective was a member of the tribe that he provided me with designer clothing that he normally wouldn’t sell for the cop discount.

  During an argument, Robin once had claimed that I dressed so well to overcompensate for the fact that I had disappointed my parents and became a cop, to prove to the world that although I was not a professional, I could afford to dress like one. I disagreed. My father was in the schmata business—a pattern maker for a dress company downtown—and always made comments when we were out on the street about the lines, the cut, the bias, the drape of dresses and sport coats that passersby wore. Now, I simply could not wear a cheap suit. If I cared so much about appearances, I asked Robin, why was I still driving a ten-year-old Saturn station wagon in the most car-conscious city in the world?

  On First Street in Little Tokyo I stopped for a few minutes and watched through a shop window as an elderly man made tofu, then passed a bonsai nursery, inhaling the resinous scent of the tiny pine trees. As I walked I felt my Beretta jangle against my ribs. It had been almost a year since I had worn the gun and it felt odd, like when I first slipped on my wedding ring at the temple and fiddled with it all evening.

  At a small corner Japanese restaurant I sat at the counter and ordered breakfast—rice, miso soup, nori—dried seaweed—broiled mackerel, and green tea. I dipped a few strips of nori in soy sauce, rolled them up with dollops of rice, and munched on them while I read the Times and waited for my fish. After breakfast, I walked over to the LAPD parking structure on Main Street, checked the license plate number on the key ring, found the green Chevy Impala with 163,000 miles on the odometer, and headed back down to San Pedro.

  When I arrived at Relovich’s house, I walked up to the porch and looked out at the harbor. Fog shrouded the horizon and a brisk breeze rippled the water. The mournful bellow of a tanker steaming out of a berth toward the open sea echoed in the distance. I leaned against a wooden railing, heard a bark, and spotted Ray Persky’s van pull up at the curb and his bloodhound, Ruby, licking the back window. I shook hands with Persky on Relovich’s porch.

  “Thought you’d quit,” Persky said.

  “I did. But I came back yesterday.”

  Persky fixed me with a sympathetic look. “I really felt bad when the papers blasted you after that girl got killed.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “I know you. I know how careful you are. It couldn’t have been your fault.”

  I felt my temples throb. The first person I encountered on the job mentioned the murder, and I got a splitting headache. I knew the Patton case was going to keep coming up. I knew I was going to be stressed. And I knew I had to confront the reminders with some equanimity. I spit in the gutter.

  “Thanks for the support, Ray.” Eager to change the subject, I led him inside the house and briefed him.

  “Anything you’re sure the killer touched?”

  I pointed to a chair a few feet from the sofa. “I think he sat here for a bit.”

  “That’ll work,” Persky said.

  He pulled a small, plastic vacuum cleaner out of his duffel bag, flicked on the power, and slowly ran it over the sofa for several minutes. Then he removed a gauze pad from the vacuum cleaner, thrust it beneath Ruby’s nose, and slipped it into a plastic Baggie. He patted Ruby on the ribs and murmured, “Do your thing, old girl.” The dog jumped up, sniffed the carpet, scampered out the front door, around to the back of the house, sniffing the ground by the broken window, and then to the front porch and onto the sidewalk, as Persky and I followed. The dog barked, nose down, and ambled off, straining against the long leather leash.

  “Shit,” I shouted as Ruby urinated on my left shoe.

  “You have been away a while,” Persky said. “Don’t you remember? She pisses when she picks up a trail.”

  We followed Ruby down to the bottom of the hill. She paused and then veered left, speckling the sidewalk with urine. This spot was across the street and down the block from where the gangbanger with the spiderweb tattoo was selling drugs.

  She ambled down the sidewalk, swung left, began to climb a hill and suddenly stopped, sniffed the sidewalk and the curb for a few minutes, occasionally lifting her head and yelping.

  “Why’s she stopping here?” I asked.

  “This is where the scent ends,” Persky said. “This indicates that, more than likely, your suspect got in a car and drove off. Does that fit with your suspect’s MO?”

  “I wasn’t thinking that last night, but now it makes sense. That’s kind of a narrow street by Relovich’s house. Neighbors would have noticed the shooter’s car. He probably figured it would be safer to park here, walk over to Relovich’s street, climb the hill, take care of business, and then slip back to his car.”

  I patted the dog, then clapped Persky on the shoulder and said, “I appreciate it, Ray.”

  As we slowly traipsed back up the hill, the sun began to bleed through the fog and golden shafts of light slanted through the mist. While Ruby stopped to sniff a tree, I admired the view up the hill. May was my favorite time of year in Southern California—after the winter rains, before the June gloom, when shades of purple graced every neighborhood. A lush canopy of jacaranda trees led up to Relovich’s house, the lavender blossoms in full bloom. Pendulous clusters of lilac wisteria cascaded over eaves and violet stalks of Mexican sage sprouted from gardens. As I climbed the hill, the sidewalks stained from the jacaranda blossoms, I felt as if I were floating on a purple cloud.

  When I reached the top, I scanned the harbor, which looked entirely different in the light of day than it had the previous night. Unlike much of the Southern California coastline, San Pedro has a working waterfront, an industrial jungle dotted with two hundred-foot-high cranes used to transport goods to and from the ships. Metal cargo containers as big as railroad cars were lined up on the docks and fishing boats traversed the channels.

  I returned to Relovich’s house and slowly strolled through the rooms, not knowing exactly what I was looking for, just hoping something would catch my eye. I realized, again, how every room was a mess, except for the daughter’s. Walking out of the house toward my car, I was left with the impression that Relovich didn’t care much about his own life, but he loved his little girl and probably found her visits the only meaningful part of his week.

  I cruised down to the Harbor Division station, a bland, blocky, orange brick structure hard by the freeway, facing the railroad tracks, where a freight train rumbled by. I walked through the station to the scuffed prefab trailer in the parking lot that housed the homicide unit: a makeshift squad room with frayed blue-gray carpeting. Eight battered metal desks were bordered by metal filing cabinets topped with brown cardboard boxes overflowing with case files. Fluorescent lights cast a pale green tint over Detectives Hank Savich and Victor Montez, who were waiting for me at their desks. Neither stood up when I introduced myself; neither extended a hand.

  I sat down on the edge of a desk and said, “I really appreciate you coming in on Saturday morning to help—”

  “First of all, I don’t like getting bigfooted,” said Savich, who had a pale, narrow face pockmarked with acne scars. “I don’t like outsiders taking my
cases.”

  I was well aware that divisional detectives often resented it when Felony Special—or one of the other specialized units from the Robbery-Homicide Division—took over an investigation. Some were able to put their resentment aside, act professionally, and provide the downtown detectives with a proper briefing. Others, like Savich and Montez, apparently could not overcome their wounded pride. I understood how they felt. Still, I wasn’t in the mood to take any shit from them.

  “I didn’t take this case. It was assigned to me by my lieutenant.”

  “I thought you’d quit, Detective Le-veen,” Savich said, intentionally mispronouncing my name.

  “It’s Le-vine.”

  “Whatever,” Savich said.

  “I did quit. But now I’m back.”

  Montez, pear-shaped and cocky, stood up beside his desk and looked down at me. “Witnesses like Latisha Patton might not get protected at Felony Special, but here in the Harbor, we make sure our wits don’t get capped.” He smiled malevolently. “So if we tell you what we’ve got, you’ve got to promise to be real careful, Detective Le-veen.”

  I clenched my teeth, trying to control my anger. But almost against my will, I found myself jumping to my feet and, with a quick backhand, I swept everything off Montez’s desk, a half-filled coffee cup and pens, pencils, and paper clips scattering on the floor, the cup shattering on a desk leg and the coffee pooling on the carpeting. I kicked a coffee cup shard across the squad room and shouted, “I came here to be briefed! Not to listen to your sarcastic fucking comments!”

  I took a few steps until I was just inches from Montez, forcing him to take a step back. “Hand over the murder book, and I’m outta here.”

  Montez glanced nervously at me and whispered to Savich, “He’s a fucking psycho.”

  I knew they couldn’t afford to let me grab the murder book and walk. If they refused to help me—a Felony Special detective on a case that the chief was personally interested in—they might be consigned next week to the purse snatching detail.