Earth Angels (4 page)

"Long strides. I still don't get it."

"All women who walk with long strides love to fuck. It's a sure sign."

"You're crazy. "

At L.A. County General Hospital, Stepanovich and Arredondo followed a cement and tile corridor past dingy waiting areas packed with pregnant black and brown women. They turned a corner into an acrid-smelling hallway and maneuvered their way past a janitor mopping up a puddle, patients on gurneys and in wheelchairs, and shuffling orderlies and nurses.

Finally they came to a glass-enclosed nurses' station. A tall black nurse was sitting at a desk. She had corn rowed hair, heavy green eye makeup, and white lipstick accentuating tobacco stained teeth.

Stepanovich showed her his badge. "Primitivo Estrada. Can you tell me his condition?" The nurse looked up, lit a long, slim cigarette with a tiny throwaway lighter, and coughed some smoke.

"The gunshot victim?"

"Right. "

She set the cigarette in a small glass ashtray and used a long red fingernail to pick something from the end of her tongue. With the same finger she opened a three-ringed notebook that was sitting on the desk and thumbed through the pages. "Condition critical. He's in room 309. That's post op intensive care."

"Is he able to talk?"

She shrugged. "He's been completely out of it."

"Is he going to live?"

"You should probably ask the doctor that."

"I'm asking you."

She picked up the cigarette and took a long drag. "Odds are the boy is headed for the big hacienda."

"Any objection if we talk to him?"

"Any requests for interview by law enforcement officers are supposed to go through the security office. That's in the next building over. You fill out a form. You bring the form back here, and when the nursing supervisor has time, she looks at it to see if it's OK. Make sure it has a date/time stamp on it. Sometimes they forget to put the stamp on it. Then you have to go back to the security office."

"Thanks," Stepanovich sighed, and he and Arredondo filed down the hall.

At Room 309, Stepanovich pushed open the swinging door. The room held four occupied beds and reeked of a sweet, indescribable odor reminding Stepanovich of the dead body calls he'd handled when assigned to uniform patrol.

He and Arredondo approached a bed in front of a flyspecked window. Payaso was lying on his side. His chest and back were covered with thick white surgical dressing and tape, and clear tubes issued from his right arm, nose, and penis. His breathing was labored and spittle had dried at the corners of his mouth. His tattoos appeared lifeless and faded on his cocoa skin. Stepanovich tugged the curtain from the wall to shield them from the view of the other patients. He leaned close to the wounded man. "Payaso," he whispered, "can you hear me?"

Payaso gurgled, gagged, took a few rapid breaths, then rested. "Mama," he said finally without moving.

"Do you have pain?" Stepanovich asked in a fatherly tone.

Payaso's lips moved. "Aaaaaah."

"Who shot you?"

Payaso's lips twitched a little.

"Tell me who shot you, Payaso."

Payaso's tongue struggled to moisten his lips.

"Can you talk?" Arredondo asked.

"Mama," Payaso said finally. "Mama."

Stepanovich leaned closer to the wounded man. "Mama wants to know who shot you," he whispered.

"Mama."

"
Diga
Mama," Arredondo said. "Was it someone from Eighteenth who shot you?"

Stepanovich picked up Payaso's left hand and massaged it gently. Payaso swallowed with difficulty. His jaw worked a few times as if he was trying to form a word.

"Your mama is here," Stepanovich said in the Spanish his Mexican mother had taught him. "Tell Mama who shot you,
mijo
. "

Payaso strained to open his eyes. He blinked rapidly. Then his eyes closed again.

Stepanovich tapped Payaso's arm. No response. Then he gripped his bare shoulder and shook firmly. "Wake up."

Payaso opened his eyes and looked at them. His head moved weakly. Both Stepanovich and Arredondo leaned closer.

"Mama is here,
amigo
," Arredondo whispered. "Tell her who shot you."

Payaso gurgled.

"Mama
esta aqui
, " Stepanovich said.

Stepanovich leaned to within inches of the man's face. He smelled hospital breath.

Payaso's eyes darted. His lips pursed to form a word.

"Talk to me, Payaso."

"Fuck you, cop," he murmured. Then his eyes closed and he breathed deeply.

Stepanovich and Arredondo looked at each other.

Stepanovich threw open the curtain partition and sauntered to the window. He looked out at the heart of East L.A.: a huddle of sooty medical buildings, some ambulances parked in a lot. Down a sloping road leading past the hospital entrance was the juvenile jail facility, a modern two-story edifice that looked like a college classroom building surrounded by a high chain link fence.

"He'll be a solid gangbanger right to the end," Arredondo said.

"He's not gonna die. Even the hard core gangbangers talk before they die."

They left the room. Outside in the hallway, Arredondo stopped to use a pay telephone.

A young nurse, a slender Hispanic woman with dark, brooding eyes, approached Stepanovich. Her jet-black hair delicately framed her face and was pulled into a knot in back. Her complexion was a vibrant Aztec beige that Stepanovich guessed required no makeup of any kind. She had full hips, long legs, and her starched nurse uniform strained against full breasts. The plastic name- tag she was wearing read: "GLORIA SOLIZ, R.N."

"I'm the nursing supervisor for this ward," she said in a less than friendly tone.

"We're with LAPD," he said, unable to take his eyes off the pencil line scar high on her left cheek.

"That doesn't give you the right to bother someone who is fighting for his life."

"We're investigating a murder."

"This is a hospital. If you want to interview patients, I'd appreciate it if you would go through the proper procedures with the security office."

"We'll be sure and do that next time."

"You cops must go to some school to learn how to act like that."

"Pardon me?"

"Condescending to people. Policemen practice it like an art."

He shrugged. "Just trying to do a job."

"Don't do your job in my ward. This is where people come to get well. If Mr. Estrada was a policeman, would you want someone to disturb him?"

"No, but Mr. Estrada isn't a policeman. He's a gang member who may know who murdered a nine-year-old girl today."

"I'm not trying to be confrontational."

"Yes, you are."

She shook her head disdainfully and headed down the hallway. Stepanovich was transfixed by the movement of her hips.

"Who's the medium strider?" Arredondo said, setting the telephone receiver back on the hook.

"A lady I'd like to get to know," Stepanovich said without taking his eyes off her.

****

FOUR

Stepanovich drove out of the hospital parking lot and cruised along a road that followed the perimeter of the hospital complex. He turned right on State Street and drove across a bridge spanning the freeway. At the end of the bridge he slowed down and pulled to the curb in front of Manuel's taco stand, a shiny red hut with three stools at the service window and two picnic tables covered by a patio roof.

Without exchanging words, he and Arredondo climbed out of the sedan. Manuel, a heavy, thirtyish Mexican wearing a stained butcher's apron and a Dodgers baseball hat, prepared tacos, wrapped them in wax paper, and handed them to the detectives. Stepanovich made no attempt to pay because he knew Manuel would refuse him. Years ago he'd arrested a member of the Happy Valley gang who'd robbed, then pistol-whipped Manuel into unconsciousness. Since then Manuel had refused to accept Stepanovich's money. Though he knew Internal Affairs Division frowned on accepting such gratuities, nevertheless Stepanovich stopped by a couple of times a week. He figured Manuel could afford a few tacos, and besides, while he was there he was providing Manuel free protection from armed robbers.

Holding the tacos with their fingertips, Stepanovich and Arredondo stood on the sidewalk in front of the place and ate in the knees apart, leaning forward, dripping taco position.

Manuel wiped his hands on his apron. "Who claimed at the church?"

"Eighteenth," Stepanovich said with his mouth full.

"Is it true they killed a little girl?"

Stepanovich nodded.

"I hope you waste the fuckers when you catch 'em. The streets ain't safe no more. The goddamn pachucos are everywhere. They just strut around and people are afraid to do anything. You should do it Mexican style. You don't see no pachucos strutting around below the border. Down there they shoot your ass on sight. If you get out of line, the police take you outside of town and let you have it but good."

"That's a good point."

Three young women wearing short skirts and hair ratted high stepped up to the other side of the counter, and Manuel turned to wait on them.

Stepanovich finished his taco and used a paper napkin to wipe his mouth and hands. On the crowded freeway below, long ribbons of blinking taillights led from L.A.: clones in Volvos and Hondas raced toward stucco suburbs named Villa Park, Greenbriar Park, and Frazier Park. He wondered where Gloria Soliz lived.

"It's all the luck of the draw," Arredondo said with his mouth full. "If the little girl's parents hadn't brought her to the wedding, she'd still be alive. If she'd have been sitting in the next seat, the bullet would have missed her."

"We're gonna put this case together," Stepanovich said, still staring at the freeway.

Arredondo wiped his hands with a handkerchief. "Even if we find out who the shooters are, we'll probably never be able to convict 'em."

"We'll see."

"I'd like to find the guy who did it and blow his goddamn brains all over the street."

An exhausted Stepanovich nodded. He took a deep breath, then checked his wristwatch. There were no hot leads and he suggested they call it quits for the day.

After dropping off Arredondo at the Hollenbeck Station parking lot, Stepanovich drove a mile or so past the small factories, machine and auto repair shops along the heavily traveled San Fernando Road to the suburb of Glendale.

Glendale was a well-established suburban community of apartment houses, single-family homes, and a thriving commercial area with an air-conditioned shopping mall. Like most other Southern California city officials, the Glendale city fathers had allowed many new apartment houses to be built to accommodate the city's share of the recent influx of immigrants. While most of those who'd flocked to L.A. were Mexicans who gravitated to minimum wage jobs in factories, restaurants, and car washes, the people settling in Glendale were mostly Asians, Cubans, Armenians, and East Indians, a middle class group of entrepreneurs who purchased small restaurants, bakeries, service stations, and the cheap motels along Colorado Boulevard.

The city's luxury homes were situated at the north end of town at the base of the foothills and looked down at Brand Boulevard, the main thoroughfare, recently widened to fit in more car lots and banks. Around the new apartment buildings both east and west of Brand, fast food establishments, a gym called the Fitness Connection, and even a couple of singles bars thrived.

Stepanovich turned right off Brand and halfway down the block slowed in front of the Lakeview Arms apartment house, where he lived. Except for the "LAKEVIEW ARMS" sign adjacent to the glass security door at the entrance, the place looked exactly like all the other buildings lining the street. Like most nights, the parking places near the entrance were already taken. He refused to pay the thirty dollars extra to park in the underground garage and hadn't been issued a monthly Lakeview Arms parking permit. He cruised down the street and maneuvered into a parking space near the corner.

After locking his car, he trudged back up the street past two story stucco apartment houses with names -The Pines, Roma Gardens, The Mediterranean that could only have been picked from the Southern California Book of Meaningless Apartment Names. He opened the security door without using a key. The lock had been broken during a daytime burglary over a month ago, and the owner, a yacht builder who lived in a mansion in Laguna Beach, hadn't gotten around to having it repaired. Inside, Stepanovich was hit with a familiar chemical odor wafting from the super-chlorinated swimming pool situated between the apartment structures. Lakeview's Lake. He stopped at his mailbox and, dodging some plastic lounge chairs, he made his way along the perimeter of the pool to his apartment. He unlocked the door, flicked on the light, and stepped in.

The living room was bare except for a brown bean-bag chair and a card table he'd borrowed from Arredondo after Nancy had stripped the place of everything, including the console television and an over-priced sofa and recliner chair she'd purchased with a loan from the Department credit union just before walking out on him.