White Sister (27 page)

I spotted Chooch in the partially filled waiting room studying his USC playbook. I cleared my throat and when he looked up a concerned look passed over his face. I indicated I needed to use the bathroom, then headed toward the men's room down the hall. A few seconds later Chooch arrived.

"Dad, what are you doing here? They're gonna see you."

"I needed to come."

We hugged each other, and then he reported that Alexa's condition still had not changed. The doctors were keeping her in a drug
-
induced coma that would continue until just before the operation, when the anesthesiologist would take over. "They won't let anyone but her doctors and Luther see her," Chooch concluded.

"I know, but I'm gonna try, anyway."

"Dad
"

"I've got to, son." He looked at me for a long moment. "You know all this stuff on TV where they're saying your mom was in a relationship with Slade?"

"That's a total lie," he said, hotly.

"I know, but for a few hours yesterday, I was buying into that. I
had some time when I didn't believe in her. Now I feel horrible about it."

"Dad, if you go back there and they catch you, they'll call security. You know where you're gonna end up."

"Just go to the front desk and keep the head nurse occupied. I'm going to find out where they keep the gowns and masks. Nobody will recognize me."

"Don't do this, Dad."

"If this goes bad tomorrow, I've got to at least tell her I'm sorry and how much I love her. It may be my only chance." He held my gaze. "What room is she in?"

"Six-ten."

I found a supply closet down the hall and grabbed a set of green surgical scrubs, a cap, mask, and paper slippers. I returned to the men's room and gowned up, then walked back toward the waiting room and nodded at Chooch.

While my son went over to the nurse's station and started an animated conversation, I crossed to a side door, opened it, and quietly slipped inside.

Alexa looked much smaller than before, like she was slowly wasting away under her surgical dressings. Her head was wrapped in gauze and she was attached to a mile of plastic tubing. Stuff was gurgling and hissing all over the room. Pumps and machines were keeping her alive. I found a chair and sat next to her bed, then took her hand in mine. I could hear my own steady breathing through the mask, feel her delicate pulse under my fingertips.

I remembered how it had started for us just five short years ago. I had hated her on sight back then. She'd been prosecuting me at Internal Affairs for a crime I'd been falsely accused of. She was I
. A
.'s number one advocate prosecutor with a stellar record of convicting dirty cops. Beautiful and self-assured, she was determined to get my badge. As things turned out, she got my heart instead.

Now I watched her lungs slowly filling with air, her chest rising and falling slightly with each mechanical breath. I marveled at the soft texture of her subtle beauty.

What would I do if I lost her? Even though I had doubted her, I'd never stopped loving her. That had to be worth something. "I'll always love you," I whispered softly.

The machines gurgled and hissed, while her heart monitor kept the rhythm. It was ugly, foreboding music. A concert of despair.

Chapter
42.

I MET SALLY Quinn at a restaurant called The Turf House, in the
Valley. She chose the place because it had a history of health department violations and the food was so lousy it was cresting on dangerous. Cops, who are notorious chow hounds, never ate there so we had a good chance of not being seen. We sat in a booth in the back, nursing lukewarm coffee in chipped mugs.

"This place is as bad as advertised," Sally frowned. "Can you believe it? There's a fly in this coffee." She showed me the insect. It was listlessly swimming in a circle in the lukewarm sludge, trying to find a way out. I waved at a waitress to try and get Sally a new cup, but the woman studiously ignored me.

"You're not gonna tell me what this is all about, right?" Sally said. She started fishing unsuccessfully for the fly with her butter knife.

"Hard to testify to things you don't know about."

She nodded, then dropped the knife and pushed a folder acros
s t
he chipped wood table toward me. The smell of burning grease wafted in from the kitchen. Sally leaned forward and lowered her voice.

"It's all in that file, but to save you time, I'll hit the highlights. As you suggested, most of this background came from the gang book downtown and from a sergeant in street intel named Dona
-
van Knight who works the hip-hop gang scene."

She took a breath and launched in. "Lionel Wright was born in March of seventy-two. Only his name isn't Lionel Wright."

"Don't tell me, it's Bust A Cap."

"Orlee Lemon," she said. "Broken home. Mother was a crack whore. Father unknown."

"I've heard this story."

"Pretty typical, except Orlee was really smart. A's at Jefferson High. Did two years at City College, then transferred to Cal State. Graduated with a major in business and a minor in music."

"Where's the but}"

"Orlee Lemon was a smart kid but in his youth he was also very wild. Back when he was still in elementary school, he was doing street corners around Sixtieth for a shot caller named Mister Smith." She looked up at me and smiled. "No kidding. That was his given name, Mister."

I found his mug shot, a fat guy in his late twenties with two or three chins.

"Mister's gang handle was Crocodile Smith because even as a kid he always wore really colorful, expensive crocodile shoes. Nothing good in that folder about him. Lots of ag-assaults. One second-degree murder. Did a long bit in the SHU at Pelican Bay. Got paroled in ninety-seven."

"So how does Lionel Wright fit?"

"Turns out, while Croc Smith is away at the Bay pounding sand, Orlee Lemon went to college, then graduated and became Lionel Wright, started rapping. The Croc gets out of the joint, sees his baby G Buddy is now all grown up and cutting underground sides in a garage. Decides to go into business with him."

"This was a voluntary partnership?"

"Who knows? I did a little extra checking before I drove over here and there's a neat story that goes with Lionel's first recording contract."

"Let's hear."

"Croc had big bucks from drugs, guns, and street crime, but the gun-dealing beefs had the Feds sniffing him and they put the IRS on his tail. With Big Brother watching, Crocodile couldn't spend his money without risking a federal tax case, so he's cash rich and money poor. He needs to find a way put his dough to work where there's no IRS paper trail. He and Lionel get a CD ready, and they target a rap impresario named Ajax Matson. Ajax is what they call a "raptrepreneur." He owns a label called Walkie-Talkie Records, which has a big worldwide distribution deal with Atlantic. Guys like Ajax are inundated with CDs from wannabe artists, so getting a mega-producer like him to play your song is like next to impossible. But Smith and Lionel think up a way around this problem. They buttonhole Matson at this dance club in Hollywood and Croc hands Lionel's CD to the man, along with ten thousand dollars in crisp bills and tells him, 'You play this while we watch. Whether you like the CD or not, you keep the ten large.' "

"Not bad," I said. "So Ajax listened to it?"

Sally nodded. "And it's good."

"So then Lionel records for Ajax, right?"

"Right," Sally said. "Two albums. Ajax came up with his hip
-
hop name Bust A Cap. Both albums went gold. Then Lionel leaves Walkie-Talkie and starts WYD records and becomes a raptrepreneur himself. He's his label's first big star." She glanced across the restaurant. "Man, you think we could get some coffee that's at least hot enough so this fly can't do the backstroke in it?"

I waved at the waitress again, but she did an exemplary job of ignoring me.

"Anyway," Sally sighed, "our background on Lionel Wright says that from there on, it was a new life. Great big house in Bel Air, cars with lots of vowels in their names."

"But the problem was?"

"The problem was that Lionel Wright was about ten times smarter than Crocodile Smith, who looked fine in his gang drape
s d
own on Sixtieth, but looked like terminal cancer in the offices of trendy Westside media companies. Lionel had started integrating with Hollywood movers and shakers. He was dealing with big media conglomerates and filmmakers, writing soundtracks for motion pictures. He turns out to be great at marketing and puts out Bust A Cap clothing, which is a smash in Wal-Mart, Target, and on the Internet. Then all the other stuff happens, the hair products, video games, the whole schmeer. But he's still got this three-hundred
-
and-fifty-pound slobbering street G standing behind him pissing people off. Two years ago Lionel made his break. It ended up being something called, the Shootout at the Barn."

"I remember that. In Compton. The Barn was some titty shake. A lot of guys left on stretchers."

"You got it. Lionel does the termination meeting there 'cause it's his homeboys' club. Croc Smith sees it coming and everybody comes strapped and with backup. Six guys end up dead. Among them was Smith's younger brother, Junior Smith
gang handle, Roundwheel. Lotta anger still simmering over that. It became a straight-up revenge issue for The Croc. He started trying for some payback on Lionel. But Lionel has big money and he employs top
-
shelf security. Smith is a street villain whose idea of a smooth hit is to blow up your car. So to date there have been three attempts. All failures."

I picked up the folder and started to process this, thinking Lionel Wright had a lot of trouble heading his way. The old payback hit from his first partner on Sixtieth Street and now the Malugas. I was starting to see what Stacy Maluga might have in mind. All she had to do was set up Lionel Wright and Curtis Clark for Crocodile Smith and his posse and let the Sixtieth Street shot-caller do the wet work. Because of Smith's past history with Lionel, the Malugas would be way down on the suspect list.

I looked up at Sally and said, "Thanks."

"These are not nice people, Shane."

"Apparently."

"David Slade was still living up at Stacy Maluga's when he died," Sally said. "So this whole thing with Alexa has a gangsta
-
rap connection?"

"If you want, I'll spill the whole deal, but trust me you don't want to get mixed up in it."

"I didn't like you using me to get ESD to plant that bug, but you're a cop who gets results and I want a partner who's not afraid to kick a door, now and then. I've been working with a wuss for two years, so if you need some backup, I guess I'm volunteering."

"Even I wouldn't do that to you," I said. "But thanks for offering."

We reached out and slapped palms.

"Good hunting, partner," she said.

Chapter
43.

THE EL REY Theatre is an art deco building and registered historical landmark in the Miracle Mile district of Wilshire Boulevard. Throughout the years, its rococo frescos and thirties
-
style marquee have been completely restored and the theater has now become a trendy, live concert venue. Most of the big acts from pop to hip-hop have played there. Aside from the facility's new, state-of-the-art sound system and lighting board, there is a grand ballroom and a nine-hundred-seat theater, with an upstairs VIP lounge and full-service kitchen.

I pulled into a red zone on Burnside Street which was diagonally across from the theater where I could see both the front on Wilshire and the back parking entrance on Burnside. I was twenty minutes early, but the place was already hopping. There were half
-
a-dozen TV trucks lined up and a red carpet was laid from the front entrance to the curb. Fans thronged the sidewalk in front of the theater, trying to get photos of arriving rap stars. They spilled over into the curbside lane on Wilshire, which had been blocke
d o
ff to accommodate the overflow. Half a dozen uniformed LAPD officers diverted traffic and were attending to crowd control while reporters from Access Hollywood and Extra! jockeyed for prime position on the camera line.

I watched as Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and stretch limos ran a gauntlet of reporters and fans on Burnside. They were waved into artist parking in the rear of the theater by two uniformed guards under the supervision of an imposing brother wearing a tan suit, white shirt, bowtie, and an African Kufi hat. Fruit of Islam security was becoming commonplace at big hip-hop events. Gleaming car doors opened to discharge men wearing fur coats or designer warm
-
ups. Fans screamed from behind the chrome rail barricades shielding the parking lot as the rappers moved to the backstage entrance, trailing hot-looking women like knots in a kite's tail. The white stretch limo I had followed into Wright Plaza was parked in a VIP spot next to the back door, so I knew Lionel was already inside.

I didn't want to use my backstage pass until just minutes before the doors closed, because as one of the few non-blacks in attendance, once inside, I was not going to blend in. For the next twenty minutes I kept my eyes on the parking lot. I was looking for Stacy or Lou Maluga and the three possible hitters from Sixtieth Street who were in The Croc's known associates file. Their pictures were tucked in a manila envelope Sally had given me were on the seat beside me.