White Sister (6 page)

Slade's residence was a tan Spanish bungalow with brown shutters and wrought-iron security bars across the front windows. It was one of the rare houses on the street that had been freshly painted. I parked about twenty yards away, behind an old gray Chevy Caprice, and left my door ajar in case I needed to make a quick exit. Then I sprinted back to Slade's house. I didn't bother with the front door, because I didn't have a search warrant and a white guy jimmying a front door might not go unnoticed in this neighborhood. I had already decided to break in from the rear where I would be less visible. I went directly around back and looked in the porch window. Then I tried the back screen door. Everything was locked. I pulled out my gun and crept silently along the side of the house looking for a good window to break. I found one in the middle where the security bars were loose. I pulled one away, bending the old screws until the bar came off in my hand. Then I reached through the remaining two bars and broke the glass with my gun, found the latch, and slid the window open.

I stood quietly for a minute, listening for trouble: an alarm or a drooling Rottweiler. The house remained quiet. A strange truth is a lot of police officers don't install electronic security because they think that no street burglar would be stupid or brave enough to try and rip them off. I jumped up and shinnied through the window, squeezing between the two remaining security bars, and dropped inside.

I landed in a guest bedroom. Cardboard boxes full of junk were all over the floor. I didn't bother with them, but instead moved out into the hall. The smart thing to do was to clear the house first, to make sure there wasn't some armed homie crashing on the front couch. I knew I didn't have much time, but even so, I decided to do a quick shake to be safe. It wouldn't do Alexa much good for me to get shot as an intruder.

The house was so small that it only took a few minutes. There were three bedrooms; one had been converted into an office for Slade. The front area consisted of a dining room, living room, kitchen, and guest bath. The whole place wasn't 1,200 square feet. The furniture was old. Nothing matched. It was the kind of look you end up with after a relationship fails and you divide everything up. Before Alexa, I'd had half a dozen apartments furnished exactly like this.

Most shakes start in the bedroom because that's where people tend to hide their secrets. The master was a third larger than the two guest bedrooms. The walls were painted blue. LAPD blue or Crip blue? I wondered. The space was dominated by an unmade king-sized bed. A large Spanish dresser sat opposite it against the wall. There was a closet full of Fila running suits, known in law enforcement as 211 suits because for some reason hold-up specialists from the hood seemed to favor them.

I went quickly through the hanging clothes, checking pockets for notes, cards, or other personal debris. Nothing. I then turned to three cardboard boxes stacked on the floor and found that each one was packed with old clothes. At the back of the closet, my eye fell on a large, rectangular, black case about three feet long by one foot high. I pulled it out, broke the lock with a metal hanger, and pried the lid open. Lying on the bottom in black cut Styrofoam was a fully automatic Beretta AR-70 with two thirty-round clips. I looked down at the illegal firearm and wondered what David Slade used it for. I closed the box and pushed it back into the recesses of the closet.

Next, I searched the dresser. In with his socks, Slade had some thong underwear, some condoms, and in the bottom drawer, half a dozen hand-laundered, five-hundred-dollar silk shirts. It seemed extravagant for a guy on a sergeant's salary. There were half a dozen pictures in silver frames on top of the dresser. In all of them, Slade was dressed in silk or satin, wearing tasteless, chunky, diamond
-
encrusted jewelry. His straightened Marcelled hair glistened. In several shots, he had his arm around some very hot-looking ladies. Some were white, some African-American. In one picture he was with a prominent, up-and-coming rapper whose name I couldn't remember, but had seen on TV. Both were grinning and throwing Crip gang signs.

Then, I heard two car doors slam out front. I flipped off the bedroom light and sprinted back to the guest room just as I heard knocking on the front door.

"This is the police. Open up!" I heard Rafie yell. Then the door was being pounded on again and Sepulveda shouted, "Shane, if you're in there, open up or we'll break it down!"

I was halfway out the window when I heard the front door smash open. I landed on the grass, did a shoulder roll and came up running. I was just passing the garage when I noticed a brand-new, white Cadillac Escalade parked inside. Most cops drive midline Japanese iron. Not that a cop can't get financing on a ninety
-
thousand-dollar sled, but it seemed a little out of place sitting in Slade's ghetto garage. He had really pimped out the ride with twenty-inch, custom chrome wheels, known in the hood as blades or dubs. The car was talking to me. Something, some instinct, told me I had to check it out. I veered into the garage and tried to open the driver's side door. Locked. I could see the alarm light flashing. No alarm in the house, but a dude always wires his snap. Go figure.

I glanced over my shoulder at the back porch and saw lights going on inside. I heard Rafie and Tommy calling my name. It wouldn't be long before they'd be out here. I started frantically looking around for a hide-a-key under the bumpers. I found it in the right front wheel well, stashed high up behind the headlight
a small metal box attached by a magnet. I pulled it off, opened it, and slipped the key out. There was a small alarm remote on the key, so I chirped it and opened the door.

The car was loaded with expensive extras: leopard seats, color TV in the back, fifty-channel satellite dish on the roof. It had the latest GPS and telephone, and a sound system with enough muscle to blow all the fur off a pimp's collar. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out the registration. In the dim light from the open glove box, I could just read the DMV info. The car was owned by somebody named Stacy Maluga. The name sounded vaguely familiar. The address was 223 Oceanridge Drive, Malibu, California.

Then I heard the back porch door open and I got out of the car.

"Hey, Tommy, there's an Escalade out here. He might be in the garage," Figueroa yelled.

I was trapped. No way to get past him. I rolled up the registration slip and held it in my right hand like a baton. Then I edged toward the open garage door and looked out. Rafie was standing about twenty yards away on the porch, looking in my direction. He hadn't spotted me yet.

Here goes nothing, I thought, and sprinted out of the garage past where he was standing, and down the drive.

"Hey! Who is that?" Rafie yelled, startled. "Come back here, Shane!"

I heard footsteps behind me. I was pretty sure I could outrun him. He spent way too much time in the gym, and guys with lifter's thighs are usually slow as hell.

I rounded the corner at the end of the drive and pumped like crazy, heading for the Acura.

"Come back! Dammit, Shane! Stop!"

I made it to the car, jumped in and put it in gear. I could see Rafie clearly now, about five yards away, closing fast.

"Scully! You son of a bitch! Come back here!"

I floored it and shot away, speeding off the mean streets of Compton on my way to the mansions of Malibu.

Chapter
8.

BELOW ME, ON the left side of the road, the Pacific coast stretched in a lazy horseshoe defined by the lighted curve of the Malibu Shoreline. Off to the northeast was Pepperdine University. I was driving along twisting Oceanridge Drive, looking for 223. Finally, I pulled up and parked in front of a huge, multimillion-dollar mansion that sat by itself on a point that overlooked Malibu far below. A gold M adorned the center of an ornate design on the double-hinged, wrought-iron gates.

I put aside my fear over Alexa's fate. I had to play this carefully, and I knew I wouldn't do it right unless I had complete control of my emotions. I walled off my panic as I looked through the gates at the estate. Whoever Stacy Maluga was, he or she had a much better appreciation for security than David Slade. Floodlights blasted the grounds and signs promising armed guards and killer dogs were posted everywhere. I looked across two acres of rolling lawns toward a gorgeous neoclassical house. White columns, a flat roof, marble steps
all displayed in carefully placed uplights. It looke
d l
ike the U
. S
. Supreme Court. Hard to guess how much land was involved, but it had to be at least five or six acres.

I got out of the Acura and approached a state-of-the-art communication system on a post near the gate. The unit had two cameras: one up high for a wide shot, another set at face level to catch my close-up when I used the intercom. I pushed the buzzer and waited. Nothing. I pushed it again. About a minute later, a man spoke. He had a deep bass voice with a homeboy lilt.

"Whatchu want?"

"Is this the Maluga residence?" I asked, using my stern, no
-
kidding-around cop voice.

"Who be wantin' ta know?"

"Shane Scully, LAPD." Then I heard some muffled sounds, like he'd put his hand over the mike to talk to someone.

Seconds later, the man said, "Nobody here called the po-lice."

"It's about a white Cadillac Escalade," I said, playing out a little more line.

"Say what?"

"A new, white Cadillac Escalade, belonging to Stacy Maluga was involved in a fatal accident tonight," I lied. "The deceased isn't the owner and I'm trying to determine if the car was borrowed or stolen."

"Mrs. Maluga's Escalade?"

"Yes, Mrs. Maluga."

"What be happ'ning to that ride again?"

"It was involved in a fatal accident. I need to speak with Mrs. Maluga."

"Damn!"

And then, our little communication ended and the intercom went dead. I started to turn around, but the man was obviously watching me on the security screen, because as soon as I turned, he said, "You got some po-lice credentials and such?"

"Yeah."

"Hold 'em up t'the lens there, so I can see 'em."

I pulled out my badge and held it up.

"Jus' a minute, 'kay? Gotta lock up the dogs."

The intercom went dead again. I knew that it wouldn't take
Rafie and Tommy long to run the plate on the Escalade. They'd be here soon. I prayed that I had enough time to run some kind of a bluff. I wasn't limited by the truth like Sepulveda and Figueroa. I had so much personally at stake, the rules of the criminal justice system had no consequences for me anymore. However, once these people found out what was really going on, they'd clam up and we'd be doing our talking through lawyers, which wouldn't help me find Alexa.

A few minutes later, I heard a humming noise and looked off across the grass. A four-seater, fire-engine-red golf cart with a corny Rolls-Royce hood and a fringed canvas top was zipping across the lawn toward me with two African-Americans aboard. It slowed and bounced over the low curb, rolled down the drive, and parked on the other side of the ornate gate. The larger of the two men got out. He was six-foot-three, two-twenty, and wore a Lakers tank and baggy jeans. He had one of those lean, cut bodies that looked like the anatomy chart in a doctor's office. He also had a shaved and shined bullet head that fighters and tough guys favor.

He never smiled but said, "Where the Escalade at?"

"There was a fatality. I need to speak with Mrs. Maluga."

"You best tell me, Cochese. She ain't seein' no visitors."

" 'Cept I ain't gonna tell you. I'm telling the owner of the car. I can put out a call and get the Malibu substation up here to help me with this. You want, in ten minutes I can fill this driveway with cops."

"Mrs. Maluga ain't home."

"Fine! Have it your way." I turned, walked back to my car and pulled out the dash radio mike. An elaborate bluff, but it worked.

"What fatality?" he said. "Who be deuced out?"

"I need to talk to the owner of the vehicle," I repeated.

"If they be rock or bags a cut or some such shit in that snap, it ain't ours."

"Would you open the gate, sir? I'm about through fussing with you."

We glared at each other through gold initialed, wrought iron, until finally he nodded to the second man, another steroid experiment in basketball togs. The number two hit a remote and opened the huge gates.

"Get in the back," Baldy ordered.

I climbed into the back of the silly Rolls-Royce golf cart and off we zipped toward the house, the little electric engine humming happily while my stomach rolled and roiled.

I had been to some expensive homes in Los Angeles, but never one quite like this. Acres of manicured lawns were punctuated with several beautifully sculpted fountains, all tastefully lit from below. Flowerbeds with colorful red and white impatiens fronted trellises overhanging with purple bougainvillea, framing the edges of the garden.

They took me around to the side of the house. All this wealth helped jog my memory. I recalled where I'd heard the name Maluga before. There was some kind of big-time rap producer named Maluga. Not Stacy, but Louis. I remembered now that he had recently done a nickel in San Quentin for assault with intent to commit. He'd gotten out about a year ago. He was legendary for his violent temper, which had earned him the nickname "Luna" Maluga. Stacy had to be his wife.