“Oh, he is. Let me tell you something.” He tapped his temple with a forefinger. “Deputy Chief Grazzo thinks you’re fucking unbalanced. Quitting the department in a snit, along with your other crazy habits. But on my recommendation, he goes out on a limb and brings you back. Then he hears about you going fist city with Graupmann. He wanted to bounce you off the case. But Wegland stepped up big time and persuaded Grazzo to stay the course with you. Wegland might be a pencil-neck geek, but he’s very well connected in this department. He’s got a lot of clout. And he’s with us—with you—on this one. He’s convinced—in fact he told me this—that the best way to clear this case is to turn you loose on it.”
Duffy clasped his hands and said, “He’s not the most personable guy in the world. But I think he laid that shit on you about Graupmann and Internal Affairs because he was trying to let you know that you don’t have much of a margin for error anymore. I also think he was trying to warn you and, when you get right down to it, I think he was trying to protect you.”
I started to walk out, but lingered in the doorway for a moment and then turned around. Duffy was leafing through a sixty-dayer. “You mentioned that South Bureau Homicide was handling the Patton case,” I said. “How about the Bae Soo Sung homicide?”
“I had to ship both of ’em back to South Bureau,” Duffy said, without looking up.
“When we picked up the Sung case, they hadn’t done shit,” I said.
“Well, we didn’t do so well on it either, did we?” Duffy said, finally pushing the sixty-dayer aside and looking up at me.
“It’s important to me that—”
Duffy slammed his palm on his desk. “Leave it alone, Ash. That case got you suspended, sunk your marriage, and almost ruined your fucking life. Now you’re back with a clean slate. Be smart. You don’t want any part of it. I wish they’d never sent it over to us in the first place. As far as I’m concerned, those South Central homicide dicks can have both cases.”
• • •
I drove to Venice to see Nicole Haddad, the gallery owner referred to me by Papazian. The gallery was flanked by an antique store and a herbal medicine/massage clinic. I opened the door, a single shimmering sheet of stainless steel, and walked inside. The long, narrow gallery was a sleek, spare space with blonde hardwood floors, and brightly illuminated by overhead track lighting. It housed an eclectic array of artwork, ranging from jagged cement sculptures to huge canvases displaying Rorschach test pen-and-ink swirls.
“Can I interest you in anything?” a woman asked.
Startled, I swiveled around. She was almost six feet tall, about the same size as me, with an olive complexion and startling eyes that I initially thought were brown, but then flickered with specks of green when she turned her head, catching the gallery’s overhead lights. Her hair was cut in a bob with the sides sharply sheared just below her ears, two parallel black slashes. She wore black pants, a black silk jacket with a Chinese collar, and a pale green blouse that matched her carved jade earrings.
“I’m looking for Nicole Haddad.”
“Oh,” she said, looking surprised. “You must be Detective Levine. I didn’t think you were a—”
“A cop?” I interrupted.
“Yes,” she said flatly.
“So what do I look like?” I asked, smiling.
“You look like the kind of guy who might buy some art.”
I handed her my card, and she studied it for a moment, nodding with recognition. “I know who you are. I just Googled you.” For a moment, she stared at me so brazenly that I felt a bit exposed. She lightly touched my chest with the tip of a long red fingernail and said, “You’ve been in some trouble.”
Unlike Virginia Saucedo, the Internal Affairs detective who slipped me her card, Haddad did not gaze at me with that maternal expression of concern. She seemed to find something alluring about my brush with notoriety.
“But I know you’re not here to talk about that,” Haddad said, grabbing my arm and leading me back to her office.
She sat behind a small, antique desk, inlaid with arabesques of
mother of pearl, and said, “Detective Papazian said you might be calling. He said you’ve got some interesting things to show me.”
“Do you know much about Japanese art?”
She extended her hand toward the gallery and said, “The westside buyers only want contemporary art. But my knowledge is a little broader. I have a master’s in art history from UCLA. I was in the Ph.D. program, but dropped out. Japanese antiquities are one of my passions.” She dropped her chin and gazed up at me. “Do my qualifications meet with your approval?”
I pulled the jewelry bag out of my pocket, and emptied it on her blotter. She studied the objects through a jeweler’s loupe. Then she picked up the
netsuke
, flicked on a small flashlight, and examined it and the smaller object. As I leaned over, watching her work, I caught the herbal scent of her hair.
“I don’t want to bore you, Detective Levine, with too much background, so tell me how much you want to know.”
“Take it from the top.”
She carefully set the object at the corner of her desk blotter. “Okay. During the Edo and Meiji periods in Japan everyone wore kimonos.”
“What time period are we talking about?”
“Roughly, from about sixteen hundred to just after nineteen hundred. Kimonos were wonderful. They were exquisite creations, functional works of art. They were only missing one important thing: pockets. Women usually tucked their personal items into their sashes or in their sleeves. Men created their own pockets. They had cases for things like pipes and tobacco, sake, and knives, and hung them from their kimono sashes with a cord. The cord was secured to the sash by a kind of toggle—the
netsuke
. A bead was used to slip down the cord and secure the pouches.” She picked up the smaller object found at Relovich’s house. “This is that slip-bead. It’s called an
ojime
.”
“They’re both beautifully made,” I said.
“The Japanese have a very interesting attitude toward beauty, form, and function. They believe the practical should be aesthetic and the aesthetic should be practical.”
“What can you tell me about these particular pieces.”
She picked up the
ojime
. “See the horns, the fangs, the terrible scowl, the menacing red eyes, the hands with three fingers, the feet with three
toes. This is what the Japanese called an
Oni
. He represents bad luck and sickness and evil. He’s a devil.”
She set the
netsuke
next to it. “Now look at this stout fellow with his long robe and his sword and his purposeful expression. He’s a demon queller. The Japanese called him
Shoki
.”
“Were
Oni
and
Shoki
always together on the kimono?”
“No. But sometimes they are. These two pieces are probably a set.”
“Are these pieces worth much?”
She held the
netsuke
and then the
ojime
to the light. “The most valuable ones can sell for more than thirty thousand dollars. But most of the good ones I’ve seen run between five and ten thousand. These are probably in that range.”
“I checked some computer sites Dave Papazian told me about. But I couldn’t track them.”
“Let me give it a try.” She held up my card and then flicked it down on her desk like a blackjack dealer hitting a player. “If I come up with anything, I’ll call you.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
A bloodcurdling scream suddenly echoed from next door. Then another scream, even louder. And another.
I instinctively tapped the side of my suit coat, over my Beretta.
Haddad reached over and rapped on the wall with her knuckles. “This isn’t another murder case for you. Just primal scream therapy. A hundred bucks an hour. Welcome to Venice, Detective Levine. When I get home, I scream every night for free.”
I placed my hands on my thighs, about to stand up, when I paused and said, “Haddad. A Lebanese name.”
“Very good. How’d you know?”
“I spent a little time in that part of the word.”
She turned her head, studied me with one eye. “Levine. A Jewish name.”
“That’s an easy one.”
“I’m glad to help you with this case so I can do my part for Arab-Jewish relations,” she said, flashing me an arch look.
There was something about her that reminded me of those beautiful Israeli women who had intrigued me, with their black hair, green or deep blue almond eyes, and dusky, flawless, makeup-free complexions.
She also had the bold, confrontational demeanor of so many Sabra women I’d met.
“You Muslim or Christian?” I asked.
She patted her hair and gave me a coquettish look. “Do I look like the type who’d ever wear an chador? Lebanese Christian, of course. But now, the way people in this country view the Arab world, I’m reluctant to even tell people I’m Lebanese. I think I should call myself,” she said with an amused expression, “a Phoenician-American.”
I decided to change the subject. The less we discussed Arab or Jewish issues—in light of Israel’s recent history in Lebanon—the better off I would be with her. “Any suggestions on where I can go from here to get a line on that
ojime
and
netsuke
?”
“Let me do my own search first.”
“If you come up with anything,” I said, standing up, “let me know.”
I drove home through rush hour traffic and walked up to the roof of my building. The pollution and lights of downtown usually obscured the night skies, but it was unusually clear tonight with a dusting of stars overhead. To the east, I could see the back of the old soot-stained Ross-lyn Hotel, its enormous neon sign buzzing and snapping. A police helicopter zipped by—the
whap-whap-whap
reminding me of nighttime assaults on Hezbollah garrisons—its spotlight scanning the streets for a dirtbag they probably would never find. When it passed, I could hear the contrapuntal blare of sirens, car horns, and rap and cumbia from the passing cars. Below me, two crackheads argued over a cardboard box, a room for one.
Staring up at the stars, I thought about the Shoki and the Oni. A demon and a demon queller. Isn’t a detective’s job, at its core, to quell demons, or at least chase them? Isn’t it curious that those two objects were found in the house of a retired cop? A retired cop who was killed.
When I was a detective trainee, Bud Carducci, the salty old cop who taught me the rudiments of homicide investigation, once told me: “Rule one of the homicide dick: there are no coincidences. Rule two: there are no rules.” I interpreted that to mean that coincidences are highly unlikely, but not impossible. Was it a coincidence that Relovich, an excop, had a demon and a demon queller in his house? Did these objects have any connection—even tangentially—to his murder?
I then thought about the way Nicole Haddad had tapped me on the chest with her fingernail and that jolt I had felt. But I had always made it a point not to date women I met during the course of an investigation. At least until the investigation was finished. Maybe after this case was cleared I’d give her a call. But I knew I probably wouldn’t. The Jewish-Arab thing might be too much to overcome.
The next morning, I decided I wanted to contact Theresa Martinez, the young Hispanic woman who’d been busted in San Pedro. I had two witnesses. And one was a crackhead. I had to find a way to persuade her to talk.
When I saw her last, I had been reluctant to lean on her. I had leaned on Latisha Patton, and that had got her killed. I didn’t want to pressure another young woman to talk. But I realized that I had to either push every witness to the limit, or give the murder book to a detective more ruthless than me, a detective who was willing to do whatever it took to clear the case.
I remembered that Martinez worked as a secretary for a large engineering firm in Torrance. I figured that she hadn’t told her employers about her arrest and her involvement as a witness in a homicide investigation. In the past, I’d persuaded a few witnesses to talk to me simply by showing up at their jobs. They’d agreed to cooperate just to get rid of me before their employers discovered who I was. I thought this might work with Martinez.
I drove down to Torrance, parked in a lot a few blocks from the 405 Freeway, and waited for the receptionist to finish a call. When she hung up the phone, I asked for Theresa Martinez.
“And who should I say is here to see her?”
I made it a point not to identify myself as a detective. I would hold that out as a threat if she wouldn’t agree to talk. “Just tell her it’s Ash Levine.”
The receptionist punched a few numbers on the switchboard, muttered into the phone, paused, and said, “Ms. Martinez says she doesn’t know any Ash Levine.”
“Tell her I want to talk to her briefly about a purchase she made in San Pedro last week.”
The receptionist repeated the message, looked up at me and said, “She’ll be right down.”
About twenty seconds later, Martinez entered the lobby, cast a nervous glance at me, and motioned to follow her out the front door into the parking lot.
“That’s not right to bust in on me at my job like this,” she said. She was still dressed like a preppy, wearing khakis and a pale blue short-sleeved Polo shirt. She looked very young and very nervous and very vulnerable. Just like Latisha had looked when I interviewed her the first time. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.
I leaned against a car in the parking lot and took a deep breath. “If you cooperate, agree to meet me at the station, and tell me everything you saw that night, I’ll walk straight through the parking lot to my car, and I won’t bother you at work again.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I don’t think you want your boss to know why I’m here.”
“
Christ
.”
“So you’ll cooperate?”
“I got no choice.”
“What time you get off?” I asked.
“I’m working part-time. I’m off at one.”
I remembered she attended community college. “You have class this afternoon?”
“No. Tonight.”
I told her to stop by PAB after work. I gave her directions and I walked across the lot to my car.