Authors: Joseph Wambaugh
Suki turned out to be short and cute, half Cambodian and half Thai, much younger than Ivana, with surgically enhanced breasts. She passed herself off as Japanese to her round-eyed customers because they seemed to prefer the idea of Japanese masseuses, and she sometimes claimed to have been a geisha in Tokyo. Suki was a relatively new girl and would be working off her expenses for a long time. She said, “Violet say to me that Daisy runs away from the apartment when she hears about baby sister dying with other peoples. Daisy tell to Violet and Lita that all the peoples owe for travel to Mr. Kim.”
“Running away to where?” Hector asked.
Suki hesitated. Ivana poked her and said, “Tell it all!”
“To police,” Suki said, while looking at her sandals.
“What?” Hector yelled it so loud, both women flinched. “And what is she gonna tell the police?”
Suki looked up fearfully and said, “About how Mr. Kim help many to get to America, and how me and Daisy got to work for him very long time and pay to him money for . . . for all things he tell us to do with customers, and . . .”
“Yeah, what else?”
Suki’s chin was quivering when she said, “And she say she also going to tell about Mr. Hector, who collect the money for Mr. Kim.”
“Son of a bitch!” Hector said. “The cunt is gonna put us in the joint! Where is she?”
Suki said, “Daisy runs away from the apartment this morning crying tears.”
“And what the fuck’s the other roommates gonna do about it?” He posed the question to both women. “Violet’s the Vietnamese girl, right? And Lita’s the Mexican.”
Ivana said, “Violet told to me that her and Lita keeps shut and says nothing to nobody about what Daisy is saying, but I think you must find Daisy and talk with her before Mr. Kim discover about this and . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Kee-rist!” Hector said, hearing his ringtone. He didn’t have to look. He knew who it was.
Ivana told Suki, “Okay, go back to work now.”
When she and Hector were alone, she said, “I got good news, too.”
“I could use some,” Hector said. “What is it?”
“You remember how you ask me to say if I ever get customer with leg or arm cut off? And to learn if the operation was in Tijuana, Mexico?”
“Yeah,” Hector said, almost having forgotten about Basil and his special needs.
“Is missing foot okay?” Ivana asked.
She was wearing cutoff shorts, a tank top with a cotton shirt over it, and tennis shoes. It made her look more than ever like a kid, he thought. A fragile kind of kid. Dinko pulled to the curb in front of the liquor store on Hollywood Boulevard and tooted the horn once. She ran to his car, opened the door, and got in. She seemed different from the last time they’d met. He shut off the engine and looked at her.
“What happened, Lita?” he asked before she could speak.
“I am so full of fear, Dinko,” she said.
“Is it your boss? What’d he do to you?”
“No,” she said. “I have not done nothing for the boss. He is Russian man who is bartender. I am learning the lap dance from other girls, and I am serving drinks, and one time I do the dance onstage, but the boss he says I am bad dancer, like you say also. I only make little bit of money from tips so far. But yesterday something bad happens down there where you come from. Down by the harbor. Many people die.”
“Yeah, the Asians that were found dead in a can at a storage yard. I read about it. What’s that got to do with you?”
“I am living with two girls in our apartment. One is call Daisy. They find out on the television about the people dead in the, how you say, container?”
“Yeah, a can. A container. So what happened with Daisy?”
“She got crazy with sadness last night. She scream, she cry. She say a dead one down there is the baby sister. And she say she is running to police. Violet say, ‘No, Daisy. You must not run to police. Is great danger to you.’ That is what she say to her.”
“What? Daisy was gonna rat out the smuggling operation?”
“Sorry, I don’t . . .”
“To tell about the people who brought them all to this country?”
“To tell, but the man who pay for them to come to America is our boss. He is the Korean man, call Mr. Kim. Hector sees me dancing in the place where you first meet me and calls Mr. Kim, who is boss over Hector. He is the man all girls must pay money to for our job, even girls like me that come to this country without his help. I still got to pay him for the job and to live in the apartment and for the food and clothing I must wear in my work. And Mr. Hector is the one who collects the money for Mr. Kim.”
Dinko thought it over, the consequences if the police learned that Kim and Hector Cozzo were involved in the smuggling caper that had gone way sideways. “I hope you’re not worrying about Hector,” Dinko said. “He’s always been just a second-rate hustler, but if he wants to work for gangsters, then he deserves to go to jail with them. If I know Hector, he’ll end up ratting out his boss. Is that what you’re worrying about, my old friend Hector getting arrested?”
“No, Dinko, I am in fear for me!” she said. “When Daisy runs away I try to call her back. She is the best girl of all I meet here. I go out of our apartment and run after her. When I arrive to the corner, I see the big car come by. The big black car with shiny wheels. Daisy stops at the corner and the driver of the black car tells something to her and he opens up the door. Daisy looks at him. She yells loud at him in the Korea language. Then she looks very afraid. Then she says something more in the language. But then she has a look of fear and she gets into the car. I run up to see who is the driver of the big black car.”
“Let me guess: it was the Korean.”
“I cannot say because I only see some of his head, but I
think
it is Mr. Kim.”
“I get it. So you’re scared that because she didn’t come home last night, he did something bad to her. Is that it?”
“That is it.”
“So you’re scared for Daisy?”
“And for me also,” she said. “When I get back to my apartment I am so full of fear I say to Violet that I see Daisy talking to some man in a black car, but I do not say he look like Mr. Kim.”
Dinko was stopped cold by that bit of information. Then he said, “This is not my problem.”
“No,” she said. “Is not.”
“I got nothing to do with these Hollywood players.”
“No,” Lita said.
“Just because I gave you a ride, that don’t make me responsible for you.”
“No,” she said.
“Goddamnit,” he said. “Why did you call
me
?”
“You was good to me,” she said. “I do not know nobody but the girls I am working with. They cannot help me. They cannot help nobody.”
“Goddamnit,” he said. “You expect a lot from a stranger.”
“I am sorry. I am sorry I call you. Please forgive.”
She started to get out of the car. He said, “Wait a minute. Sit down. Lemme think.”
Then he said, “Maybe Kim just had a chat with Daisy and talked her outta snitching him off to the police. Maybe she’s staying overnight with Kim for a kiss and a cuddle. I think pimps are good at that kind of thing. She’s probably fine.”
Lita said, “But if Daisy is not fine, Violet can tell Mr. Kim what I say to her. About how Daisy went away in a black car with shiny wheels.”
“Are you sure you did not tell Violet you thought it was Mr. Kim in the car?”
“No, I had too much fear to say the man look like Mr. Kim. Then I know I got to run away from those persons.”
“Did you tell her that Daisy was speaking Korean to the guy in the car?”
Lita thought about it and said, “Maybe I tell that to Violet.”
“Christ,” Dinko said. “Tell you what, can you come home with me tonight? I’ll take you to my house, and tomorrow you can call and see if she came back. If Kim talked her outta going to the cops and she’s back to normal, I’ll drive you back here to Hollywood. But I wish you’d stay in Pedro or Wilmington or maybe Long Beach and get an ordinary job.”
“I cannot earn enough money cleaning the houses, Dinko.”
“Yeah, yeah, you said. Your mother and brothers back in Mexico. Anyways, run back to your apartment now and get a few overnight things.”
“People like me do not got things for one night,” she said. “All I got is in one big
maleta
.”
“Okay, go get the big
maleta,
” Dinko said. “Let’s get going.”
He waited twenty minutes, until she came struggling back along the street, now wearing a jersey-knit wrap dress that he figured she’d maybe bought on Alvarado Street for about twenty bucks. She was carrying a heavy piece of worn leather luggage with both hands.
He got out of the car and took it from her and loaded it in the open hatchback of the Jeep. When he got back in the car and looked at the girl beside him, he thought, What the fuck am I doing? Why am I taking on this kind of crazy responsibility? I’m not her daddy. She’s just a Mexican whore!
His frustration rising, he told her, “I’m only thirty-one years old and somehow you make me feel like an old man with these responsibilities I didn’t choose.”
“I do not understand,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he said.
He started up the car and headed east, toward the Harbor Freeway. When he was driving south on the freeway he said, “I bet you think I’m bringing you home to have sex with you, right?”
She continued looking straight ahead at the road, as though she was expecting exactly that from him, and she said, “I am no child, Dinko.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that,” he said. “But I got a news flash. Sex’s got nothing to do with why I’m being such a stupid bozo. If it did, it might make a little sense. If it did, I wouldn’t be taking you home to my mother’s house. There’s no sex, drugs, or rock ’n’ roll under
her
roof, I can tell you. So I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this.”
Another silence, until she said quietly, “I think I am understanding why you help me, Dinko.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Wanna clue me in?”
“We got words in Spanish.” She turned her face toward his. “You have the
compasión.
This mean, I know with my heart, you are very kind man, Dinko.”
EIGHT
T
he roll call
that afternoon was boring, as usual. Sergeant Murillo told his officers to report any complaints regarding illegal Somali wire transfers to the detectives. He also alerted them that Vietnamese drug dealers were removing the guts from ordinary battery packs and stuffing them with eight balls of dope for ingenious distribution by Hispanic street vendors.
Chester Toles, who was alert for once, said, “Are there any Americans left in Hollywood? Besides
some
of the people at this roll call?”
Sergeant Murillo looked at the assembly of a dozen coppers and said, “You all look sleepier than Chester tonight. Would it perk you up if we could hand out some awards tomorrow? How about if I buy a super-size pizza with the works for the car that wins the Hollywood Love Story Award tonight? We don’t have a Hollywood moon, but there should still be enough domestic violence calls to choose from. But no repeats. The last winner was for the guy that shot his wife, claiming he thought she was a home invader when she came home from the market with an armload of groceries. And now she drives the neighbors crazy by blowing on a whistle every time she sticks her key in the lock. He might shoot her again, but I’ve already awarded a pizza for that one.”
Hollywood Nate said, “What if a pissed-off neighbor shoots her this time?”
Sergeant Murillo thought it over. “Okay, that would qualify if a neighbor shoots her.”
Flotsam and Jetsam were back from their brief vice assignment and Flotsam asked, “How about popping for a second pizza for a Quiet Desperation Award?”
Everyone knew that the QDA was an award initiated by the Oracle for the most bizarre or memorable event of the evening involving citizens living lives of quiet desperation. In Hollywood, there were always a lot of entries in that category.
Sergeant Murillo said, “Wait a minute.” He looked in his wallet, then said, “Yeah, I can just about cover two if I can persuade the Cambodian at the pizzeria that my twenty percent off coupon should be doubled when I buy two super-size pizzas in a single order. He can’t seem to work that out.”
“I thought Asians’re supposed to be good at math,” Chester Toles said.
“Racial stereotype!” Mel Yarashi cried.
Jetsam said, “The guy’s name is Benny, and he’s a juicehead. Order them after midnight and I guarantee he’ll be so toasted you can talk him into paying
you
for the pizzas.”
The chance to win a super-size pizza perked up the coppers noticeably, and Sergeant Murillo affected the somber expression he normally showed before a joke, saying, “One last word of warning about citizen complaints. I took a phone call from an indignant gentleman last night who complained that a uniformed officer talked smack to him near Hollywood and Highland at twenty-thirty hours, after the citizen saw four uniformed coppers jacking up some young African-American men near the subway entrance.”
“Who happened to be fun-loving Piru Bloods, no doubt,” said Mel Yarashi. “Up from south L.A. for some giggles, crime, and violence.”
“Regardless,” Sergeant Murillo continued, “one of the male officers at the scene was approached by the citizen, who asked him, quote, ‘Why is the LAPD always harassing minorities?’ The officer affected an Eastern European accent and described himself to the citizen as a police officer from Moscow Five-Oh on an exchange program with the LAPD. And he replied to the citizen, quote, ‘A more relevant question is, Why are your missiles pointed at my country?’ I managed to talk the citizen out of making me write a one twenty-eight, but I promised that I would have some harsh words for the officer in question and straighten him out. Now, my question to you is, Does anyone have any idea who that jokester might’ve been?”
Of course, nobody said a word, but every eyeball in the room shifted in the direction of Marius Tatarescu. After a moment Sergeant Murillo said, “No idea? Okay, must’ve been some copper from Watch Three. Let’s go to work.”
The Hollywood Love Story Award was won hands down by 6-X-72 on their second call, and it occurred almost two hours before the sun went down. Marius Tatarescu and Sophie Branson got a call to perhaps the most disgusting hotel in Hollywood Division. It was one of those fleabag weekly rentals where the stairwell reeked of urine and vomit. One of those places where dark wallpaper could move when someone shined a flashlight on it, and you’d suddenly become aware that the wallpaper was a solid mass of cockroaches.
Of course, it was a domestic violence call, and they spotted the person reporting standing in the hotel parking lot in his bare feet, wearing only lime-green sequined shorts that matched one of the streaks in his rainbow Mohawk. Both sides of his shaved head bore tats of various zodiac signs, and he had lip, nose, and eyebrow piercings, a face full of rings and studs. He was a white man in his mid-forties with the malnourished, spidery look of a long-term tweaker, and the front of his bony chest was running bright red from clotting blood. And he was clearly spun out, no doubt from smoking crystal. He waved when he saw the black-and-white, and Sophie Branson pulled into the lot.
“Damn,” she said to her partner, “looks like a run to Hollywood Pres,” meaning Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.
Marius said, “Better now than later, when the ER is filling up. He has maybe been stabbed.”
When they got out of the car, the man said, “My old lady is the one that called, but I wanna talk to you first, though, so you can get the true story. My name is Willard Higgins, but my professional name is Ace Fingers. I’m a musician.”
The big Romanian cop asked, “And where is this person you call your old lady?”
“Up in our room. Our room for
now
. We’re getting evicted tomorrow, and it’s her fault. Always yelling and bitching.”
Sophie Branson looked closely at his bloody hollow chest but could not detect a wound. “What happened to you?” she asked. “And what does your female companion look like?”
“Look like? With the lights on, she’s uglier than a basket of maggots. With the lights out and her clothes off, she’s skinny and rough as an old wooden clothespin, so I guess she looks better in the dark. She’s tweaked out even though I try to tell her life is about moderation.”
Sophie said, “Yeah, I can see that all your face metal makes a very moderate fashion statement.”
“It’s self-expression,” Ace said. “It’s who I am.”
“You’re the Valley Boulevard Junk Yard?” Sophie said.
Marius said, “When my partner is asking what your wife is looking like, she means is your wife all lumped up like you?”
“Sorta,” he said. “Follow me and you can see for yourself.”
“What kind of weapons were involved in this situation?” Sophie asked.
“No weapons,” Ace said. “Our love play went sideways and it pissed her off. There ain’t been no crimes committed here. You’ll see what I’m getting at when you meet her.”
Sophie took a deep breath of smoggy air before entering the hotel behind the man, with Marius trailing behind her.
While climbing the greasy, reeking staircase, Sophie said, “I suppose you’ll get around to telling us something about the love play that went sideways.”
“It’s sorta embarrassing to tell it to a woman,” Ace said, “but I can tell it to your partner. I’d rather wait and see what kinda lie she tells first, if you don’t mind.”
Their room was on the second floor. When they entered, Sophie couldn’t tell which smelled worse, the stairwell or this room. The bed was a double that sagged in the middle, making Sophie wonder if one of them would roll down on top of the other after they both fell asleep. It had a bedsheet on it that hadn’t been changed since Mick Jagger was a virgin, and a large patch of darkening blood was soaked into it. There was a beat-up chest of drawers, a lamp on a mismatched wooden stand, and a tiny bathroom with the door shut that Sophie hoped she would not have to enter. They heard the toilet flush, so they knew that the woman was still alive in there.
When the bathroom door opened, Ace said to the cops, “May I present my little love truffle? This is Ms. Sadie Higgins.”
“Don’t call me Higgins, you son of a bitch,” she said. “We ain’t married and we ain’t never getting married. Not after what you done to me.” Then she looked at Sophie and said, “And don’t ask if this is the maid’s day off. I ain’t into cop humor.”
She might have been about Ace’s age, but it was hard to say. She had full-sleeve tats on one arm; the other displayed ink that ran the length of her forearm and said, “Sexy Bee-yitch.” Her brittle persimmon frizz was falling out in patches, and it looked like something was moving on her scalp. A spider? Sophie wondered. She had rosacea blooming on both cheeks, and her pale eyes were red and watery. It looked like rats had snacked on her legs. Sophie estimated that the five-foot-eight-inch woman weighed less than ninety pounds. She was wearing a red satin robe that covered most of her, but Sophie could see the dried blood on her bare feet. She was as tweaked out as he, and toothless except for a few upper molars and one rotting tooth in her lower grille.
“We understand that you are the one who called for us,” Marius said to her.
“Sure, I called,” she said. “The sick bastard raped me!”
“I think it’s time to separate and talk privately,” Sophie said.
“I can talk in front of him,” the woman said. “He raped me and I want you to arrest him, and I want to prosecute his ass in a court of law and send the bastard to the joint, where he can find out what it’s like to get choked and raped.”
“He
choked
you?” Marius looked at Ace, who grimaced and shook his head slowly, to indicate it was all a terrible lie.
She sat down on the side of the bed, causing an explosion of dust motes, and said, “Excuse me, but I’m a little bit weak from his vicious assault.”
“How long have you two been together?” Sophie asked.
“Two weeks,” she said. “We met at a rock concert. He claims to be a musician, but his so-called silky guitar riffs sound like a baboon fucking a ukelele.”
“Two months,” Ace said. “Maybe more. We’re as good as husband and wife, and we had lotsa sex before this. So how can sex with me all of a sudden be called rape?”
Neither cop was sure if there was going to be an advisement of Miranda rights here, but before Marius could tell Ace to wait outside with him the musician said, “Furthermore, I got a permission slip from her.”
Sophie said, “A permission slip? For what?”
“It’s in the top drawer in my wallet,” Ace said to Marius. Then, to Sadie: “By the way, did you steal the twenty bucks while I was downstairs waiting for them?”
“I don’t want nothing from you,” she said, “except to hear you whimper like a sick dog when they lead you down the steps in handcuffs.”
“Please, Officers, will one of you get the permission slip?” Ace said.
Marius opened the top drawer of the chest but jumped back, cursing in Romanian, when a Captain America cockroach shot across the drawer with a spectacular leap and landed on his hand.
“I gotta give that cockroach a perfect ten,” Sophie said while Marius cursed some more and brushed the roach onto the bed, where several of its cousins skittered away.
Marius pulled on a latex glove and gingerly retrieved the wallet with a thumb and forefinger, handing it to Ace, who opened it and extracted a folded piece of yellow lined paper.
“Would you please read that to your partner?” Ace asked, casting a triumphant look at his woman, who was in a hands-on-hips snit, shooting mean looks at him.
Marius handed the note to Sophie, who read aloud: “‘I hereby give you permission to do whatever you want with me. I am your kinky whore. You are my master of seduction. You can choke me while you fuck me with a jackass dildo.’ It’s signed ‘Sadie Higgins.’”
“See, that ain’t a valid permission slip!” Sadie cried in triumph. “We’re not married. My name is Sadie Sloane, so it ain’t legit. Now handcuff the bastard and get him outta here!”
“Is that what he did to you,” Sophie asked Sadie. “What it says on the note?”
“Exactly,” Ace answered. “That’s what she wanted. The trouble is, she started bleeding real bad and I had to stop. I took her in the bathroom and tried to clean her off, but she wouldn’t let me. She got real mad. Like it was my fault or something.”
Marius Tatarescu, looking a bit queasy, asked Ace, “Is that how you got blood on you?”
“No,” Ace said. “The sick bitch got so mad at me, she took the washrag she was mopping up her love rug with and threw it at me. Smacked me right in the chest with it. It’s on the floor in the bathroom if you wanna see it.”
“I shoulda threw a kitchen knife at you,” Sadie said.
“I am taking your word that it is on the floor in there,” Marius said. Then he looked beseechingly at his senior partner to deal with this one.
Sophie told the warring couple, “Stay put for a minute. We gotta talk.” She motioned for Marius to follow her out into the hallway, leaving the door open in case combat might resume inside.
In the hallway she said sotto to Marius, “Partner, I’ve been on the Job twenty years, and as a matter of professional pride I almost
never
call a supervisor to a scene, but this one needs someone above our pay grade to sign off. If we just leave them, they might smoke some crank and turn violent. She might start hemorrhaging again and go into shock and die.”
Marius said, “I got a good idea. Let us call for a detective. I think Charlie Gilford is not going to say we got to deal with these people. He will get us out of here.”
“Excellent idea,” Sophie said. “He can always find a way out of doing
any
kind of work. Let him decide if we’ve got a bookable offense here and if we need to transport Sadie to the ER.”
Sophie Branson drew her rover from her Sam Browne and keyed the mike.
“Compassionate Charlie” Gilford was a D2 who had been on the Job long enough to retire, and he was probably even lazier than Chester Toles. He was the sole night-watch detective on duty, and he spent most of his time watching a little TV he kept in his desk or trying to figure out how to get a free burrito plate from a gourmet taco truck, or maybe something tasty from a Chinese dim sum joint where they gave him a “police discount” that he had previously negotiated.